Our roads a ‘battlezone’
Eight dead in nine hours as road toll closes in on last year’s total.
Kiwi drivers are hurtling towards last year’s road toll with eight dead in just nine hours — and there’s still two months to go.
From 3pm Friday to midday yesterday eight people were killed on New Zealand’s roads. Three of them were hit by trains at level crossings.
Conditions, speed, and cars crossing the centre line are possible factors for the deaths in six crashes.
Last night the road toll stood at 323. In 2016 the road toll was 328 — the highest it’s been since 2010, when 375 died on our roads.
Yesterday Superintendent Steve Greally said the deadly start to the weekend came off the back of a “disastrous” month on our roads.
“It really is getting catastrophic. It’s now a battlezone on our roads.
“It’s just so sudden. It’s so hard for those families to deal with.”
Greally said the carnage on Kiwi roads was of particular concern for police as we head into summer, when a lot of people would be out socialising.
“I don’t know why the public is not feeling more outraged, because if [the road toll] was the homicide rate we would have a lot more to say.
“If this was the number of people dying as the result of plane crashes in this country we would have a lot to say,” he said.
Just before 3pm on Friday a Subaru Justy crossed the centre line on State Highway 1 near the Towai Tavern.
Senior Sergeant Ian Row said the car heading south smashed into a northbound vehicle, forcing it off the road.
A couple were travelling in that car. Police believed the Subaru Justy also collided with a second car heading north and that vehicle also had two occupants.
Two men and two women from the northbound vehicles suffered moderate injuries. The female driver of the car heading south died.
Associate Minister for Transport Shane Jones said he was horrified to hear of the second fatal car crash on Northland roads in three days.
“We need to improve the level of investment and the access to funding to enable the North to improve the most egregious conditions of our roads.”
Matt Grayson from nearby Towai Tavern said the road surface on the stretch of SH1 was poor with potholes and uneven tarseal.
Exactly one hour after the fatal Towai crash another person died in a three-car crash, also on SH1, but in the South Island town of Morven.
At 9.10pm further up the South Island in Maruia in the Buller District a person died in a two-car crash on State Highway 65. One man was still in a critical condition in Christchurch Hospital last night, and a woman was in a stable condition.
An hour later a car rolled on SH1 in Te Horo on the Kapiti Coast leaving one person critically injured.
One hour after that two pedestrians were killed on a level crossing in Papakura. And less than an hour later two people died when their car hit a tree on Access Rd, Kumeu, West Auckland.