‘The ripples will go on forever’
Grieving grandmother backs local authorities’ plans to cut speed limits, writes Cherie Howie
We want to have good drivers, good roads that are as safe as they can be, safe vehicles and then you want to have safe speeds. Sue Collier
The questions from Sue Collier’s great-grandchildren are heartbreaking.
Fourteen months ago their dad, Collier’s grandson Steven Hart, died when the car he was driving crashed into a truck and burst into flames north of Tauranga.
There are many hard things about living with the death of a loved partner, father, brother, son and grandson.
One of the hardest was answering questions from children now growing up without their father, Cambridgebased Collier told the Weekend Herald.
“It’s little children asking, ‘What happened to Daddy? Why did Daddy drive so fast? Why?”’
The eldest of his five kids — the youngest was just three weeks old when the crash occurred — knows why her father died, Collier said. “She’s just got her licence and she said, ‘I won’t be a fool like Dad was’.”
Despite repeated warnings from family members over the years, 35-year-old Hart was driving too fast.
He died on State Highway 2, near Pahoia Rd, far from Collier’s home district of Waipa, where the council is changing more than 200 speed limits across the district from November 4.
Key changes include reducing speeds near schools and cutting
speed limits to 40km/h in Cambridge and Te Awamutu town centres, adding more 50km/h and 60km/h zones in urban areas and dropping speed limits to 60km/h and 80km/h in some rural areas.
The changes were sparked by a government initiative putting responsibility for setting speed limits on local roads on local authorities — state highways are managed by the New Zealand Transport Agency.
As a result, councils around the country, including Auckland, are working on changes to existing speed limits, in a bid to reduce road deaths.
In Waipa, the council’s transportation manager, Bryan Hudson, said there had been a steady increase in the district’s crash rate over the last few years.
Four people died and 17 were seriously injured on Waipa roads, excluding state highways, from January to September this year, up from one death and 18 serious injuries across the whole of 2018.
In 2017 two people died and 18 were seriously injured. Serious and fatal crash numbers were more steady, at 16 so far this year, 19 in 2018 and 16 in 2017. Nationally, 266 people have died on New Zealand roads in the year to Tuesday, with 292 dying over the whole of 2018.
The district’s increasing road toll wasn’t out of sync with the rest of New Zealand, Hudson said.
“[But] Waipa’s a growing place. More people means more cars on the road and more risk for crashes.
“We have some roads that have more volume of traffic on them than highways [because Te Awamutu and Cambridge are commuter towns for Hamilton].”
But there was also a strong message, shared by Collier, for motorists to drive at a safe speed. “When we talk about managing safety on our roads . . . we want to have good drivers, good roads that are as safe as they can be, safe vehicles and then you want to have safe speeds.”
The reason people felt safe driving at the 110km/h limit on the Waikato Expressway was because the road had been designed for a higher speed limit. “But when you go off on to a narrow country road, where it’s winding, you know if you travel that same speed you’re going to crash.
“Experienced drivers will know [to slow down] but the inexperienced drivers or those new to the area might not.”
And it wasn’t just about keeping those in vehicles safe.
“It’s broadening out the conversation [about speed] so everyone is thinking about themselves and others — the pedestrians, the cyclists, the kids going to school, the pony club riders on the side of the road . . . it’s a community issue.”
Collier wants those at the wheel to look at the bigger picture too.
Her grandson was a deep thinker who was fascinated by space, but he was also a boy racer who was speeding on a road he was “too familiar with” when he crashed.
“If he had been going under 100km/h he might have survived. I learned a new word after he died — exsanguination, which meant he bled out before the smoke killed him . . . [and] when you see the remains of the car your grandson was incinerated in because of speed and lack of attention, it changes your life forever.”
And the lives of others.
Just as the whole community should benefit from Waipa’s speed limit changes and Collier’s message, the pensioner also wants people to know it was that same wider community affected by road deaths such as her grandson’s — even by those who never knew him.
The former bus driver — for decades Collier and her husband drove buses between Cambridge and Hamilton — contacted the driver of the truck Hart collided with, a man who had been close to the aftermath.
“I said, ‘Please don’t ever think it was your fault’. He said, ‘Lady, I’ve blocked it out already’. That’s the only way of dealing with it for them.”
She also spoke with a mum who was driving her school-aged children home when Hart overtook their car just before the crash. The family had lost family members in a horror multiple-fatality crash two years earlier, and seeing her grandson’s crash had been devastating for them, Collier said.
“It’s the ripple effect, from one bad decision. The police, the firefighters — I know some had to go away for extra counselling — the towie, the yard where Steven’s car was towed before his body was removed.
“The ripple effect of any accident, not just Steven’s, is huge. The ripples will go on forever, and not just for us.”