Farmer: I’m tired of corner carnage
Glen Mitchell says it’s ‘‘exceedingly lucky’’ there hasn’t been a fatal crash at the end of his driveway.
Mitchell lives at the bottom of the Josephville Hill, between Dipton and Lumsden in northern Southland, where two trucks crashed on Wednesday morning.
‘‘It’s a dangerous corner that everyone knows about and fixing it should have been prioritised before now,’’ he said.
Mitchell said he hoped the work would be a permanent fix, so accidents on the hill would stop.
‘‘One thing that really disappoints me is how long it has taken to get it fixed, and I hope that it it is a permanent solution and not a temporary one.’’
The New Zealand Transport Agency reduced the speed limit to 70kmh on the hill in May last year after the surface was identified as being slippery.
Since then there have been numerous crashes on the hill, including two car crashes in the past fortnight, but police and the transport agency were unable to provide data on the number of crashes there since May.
Contractors carried out some work at the accident site on Thursday, and further repairs were scheduled for next week.
When The Southland Times visited yesterday afternoon there was fine grit on an area where diesel had spilled in the accident, but above and below that on the road the tar was beginning to melt in the heat.
The speed limit had been increased from 30kmh on Thursday, to 50kmh yesterday.
On Thursday, trucking company boss Grant Willis, of King House Removals, spoke out about the crash, also saying the agency should have fixed the road surface long before the accident happened.
The agency’s maintenance contract manager, Justin Reid, said work had not been carried out on the road surface because ‘‘the wet start to the 2019-20 summer meant the work could not be completed until now’’.
The area would be resealed, but it would be a temporary fix, and was expected to last for two or three years, Reid said.
‘‘A full design and testing process needs to be undertaken to get a rehabilitation treatment right so it will last for many years,’’ he said.
The last reseal happened in 2016 and had lasted three years, as was expected.
The area where the diesel spill had been was fixed because diesel has a negative effect upon bitumen, so had to be milled out and a cement binder added to stabilise the surface, ahead of the reseal next week.
‘‘Only the area which had the diesel spill has received this stabilisation treatment, but the area being resealed is longer,’’ Reid said.
When asked how the agency prioritised which areas of road to fix first, Reid said each year it collected high-speed data on the highway network nationwide.
‘‘That gives us the information we need to have to assess the surface’s performance and safety in slippery, wet or flushed conditions.’’
Areas that have a greater level of risk get a higher level of intervention, he said.
The most accurate average daily traffic count for the Josephville Hill was measured at Dipton, where there were 2162 vehicles on average a day in 2018, of which 12 per cent were heavy vehicles.