Road closed
State Highway 1 near Levin was closed for two hours while the wreckage from a crashed truck and trailer unit was removed, causing lengthy queues.
State Highway 1 near Levin was closed for two hours while the wreckage from a crashed truck and trailer unit was removed.
The truck, which was partially dangling over the edge of a rail overbridge near Manakau, was removed about lunchtime yesterday.
Police arrived at the crash, between the truck and a car, just before 8am.
The driver the car was flown to Palmerston North Hospital in a critical condition.
The man, in his 30s, was in a stable condition by the afternoon, Midcentral District Health Board spokesman Kelvin Teixeira said.
A Manakau resident, who did not wish to be named, said she heard the crash happen.
‘‘I just looked out my kitchen window and I could see a car on the southern side of the bridge, and I thought ‘oh God there’s an accident’... Then I walked out my front and I realised the truck was there.’’
She said the truck was heading north, and ‘‘the front of it’s come down the bridge’’.
‘‘It’s crashed through the barriers and the trailer’s still stuck up the top’’.
There was no way for traffic to get around the crash, but people had tried – many turning down a small side road she lived on, which only ran directly to the front of her home, she said.
There had been hundreds of crashes on the bridge, she said.
‘‘It’s speed and it’s also the alignment of the bridge. It’s terrible... It’s not wide enough.’’
The highway was closed in both directions for about two hours, causing frustration and delays to motorists and long queues of traffic stretching more than 5 kilometres to the north and south of the crash site.
The road opened to one lane about 10.20am, and then fully for about an hour from 11am to clear the backlog.
The NZ Transport Agency’s Wellington transport operations centre manager Roxanne Hilliard advised motorists to find somewhere comfortable and safe to pull over while they waited for the highway to reopen after the midday closure.