Kiss before parking plunge
Police blame driver but lawyer queries barrier’s strength
Adriver who sent his car hurtling over the edge of the fifth storey of a Newmarket car parking building had been leaning over to give his girlfriend a kiss.
Simon Hartnoll has been charged with careless driving causing injury after he and his girlfriend at the time were badly injured in the incident in March last year.
He appeared in the Auckland District Court yesterday for the second day of a two-day judge-alone trial.
The court heard on Monday that Hartnoll had stopped his car and put the handbrake on but left the gear in drive while pausing to give his girlfriend a kiss.
They had recently had dinner and intended to go ten-pin bowling, the court heard.
While leaning over inside the car, Hartnoll hit the accelerator pedal, causing the car to lurch forward and crash through a barrier, plunging to the street below.
Sarah Woodhams, who lived in a nearby apartment building, told the court she saw the car “sort of fly off” the side of the building.
Woodhams said she had been taking her make-up off and gazing at the city skyline when the car’s speeding lights caught her attention.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before, it was so quick and it really grabbed my attention,” she said.
“It shot across and went through the barrier.”
Woodhams lost sight of the car and didn’t see it hit a parked Nissan below, narrowly missing two women who were inside it at the time.
Hartnoll, who was 39, suffered rib and clavicle fractures and spine injuries and his former girlfriend, who was 30, suffered serious head injuries.
Police told the court on Monday the car being left in drive was the primary cause of the crash, but yesterday the defence suggested the car park’s fencing was not up to scratch.
The York St car park adhered to building code requirements when it was built but not to recent updates in the building code.
Auckland Council was not tasked with nor able to enforce requirements to ensure buildings were up to current building compliance codes, only that they met the code requirements when they were built, the court heard.
Hartnoll’s lawyer, Alistair Haskett, said he believed the outer fencing had met requirements for pedestrian safety, but nowhere did council reports indicate the fencing was strong enough to withstand the force of a vehicle.
In 2002 building requirements around car parking building barriers and the amount of force they could withstand were updated to try to prevent cars from going through barriers, the court was told.
After Hartnoll’s accident last year, police witness and senior compliance adviser for Auckland Council William Smeed said it had been arranged for several other car parking buildings in
I’ve never seen anything like it before, it was so quick and it really grabbed my attention. It shot across and went through the barrier. Sarah Woodhams, witness
the city to be inspected. “Since this accident, the council is putting in place a regime of upgrading their car parks. I am aware [it] is concerned about . . . car park fencing.”
New technology was also a factor in this decision, he said.
The council had also raised the issue with the Government and was in the process of ensuring car parks were at a higher standard than when they were built, he said.
Haskett argued this meant the council was not happy with the standard of the car park at the time of the accident, but Smeed said this was not necessarily the case.
“At the time the building was built maybe the standard wasn’t good enough,” he said. This did not mean it was a dangerous building, because codes related to structural integrity.
While the building standards had improved since the York St car park was built, the actions of the driver were still the most important.