A man has died and two others have been seriously injured in the first fatal crash of New Zealand's Christmas and New Year road toll season.
The man was driving a Nissan rental car toward Tauranga on State Highway 2 about 2.15pm yesterday when he was in a head-on collision with a car travelling in the opposite direction. The two occupants, an Omokoroa couple aged in their 70s, were trapped in their mangled Mazda for about 30 minutes as firefighters worked to cut them free.
The couple were taken to Tauranga Hospital. The 70-year-old man was last night in a critical condition in the hospital's intensive care unit while the 74-year-old woman was in a stable condition.
The crash between Gill Lane and Te Karaka Drive shut down the section of SH2 for four hours, with heavy holiday traffic being diverted down Te Puke Quarry Rd.
Acting head of Western Bay of Plenty road policing Sergeant Nigel Ramsden said excessive speed was not a factor in the crash. The vehicles were travelling about 70km/h as part of long lines of traffic, he said.
From the scene Mr Ramsden pointed to Gill Lane, barely 100m away, and referred to the death of motorcyclist Craig Ritchie when he and a 10-tonne truck and trailer unit collided at the intersection last month.
"We don't go to many crashes along here but when we do, they seem to be pretty bad," Mr Ramsden said.
Mr Ramsden said the highway was busy with a lot of traffic and people who would have seen the crash.
"We are keen, obviously, for any witnesses we haven't already spoken to to get in touch with us."
Local resident Tahla Marsh said she heard the crash from her home, which borders the crash site, but didn't realise what had happened at first.
"I thought it was a gun shot. It was real loud."
Her mother Leonie Marsh who also lives nearby said,
"I was talking to my husband who said he had to go because there was an accident outside our property."
When Leonie Marsh joined her daughter Tahla at the scene, emergency services had already erected a tarpaulin over the rental car and cut the couple free from the other car.
The roof and doors to the Mazda were removed. Debris of glass and headlights lay strewn for metres across the road.
"It was a real eye-opener," Leonie Marsh said.
The man's body remained in the wreck of the rental car but was blessed and farewelled before later being removed.
Kaumatua Peri Kohu walked around the shattered glass and crash debris to approach the rental car wreck and its deceased driver.
Mr Kohu said he did not usually bless a crash victim while they were still on the scene, but in this case he stood alongside the mangled car to ensure the driver's safe passage to the afterlife.
"I bid them farewell on the way," he said.
"Then when they remove them, then I bless the site.
"That's because that's part of my heritage. That's what we do."
Mr Kohu is one of several people called on by police when there has been a fatal accident.
"If there is somebody who has died on the roads in Tauranga, they call me."
It was not known at the time of publishing if the deceased man was from Tauranga.
The official Christmas and New Year road toll season runs from 4pm Wednesday, December 23, and ends at 6am on Monday, January 5.
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Road toll
During the 2013/2014 Christmas holiday period there were seven fatal crashes and 193 reported injury crashes. Those crashes resulted in seven deaths, 74 serious injuries and 234 minor injuries.
The deaths included:
1 driver
4 passengers
2 motorcycle riders
Six of the seven deaths and about 60 per cent of the reported injuries occurred on the open road. Over half (54 per cent) of crashes were single vehicle crashes in which a driver lost control or ran off the road, 17 per cent were intersection collisions, 9 per cent were collisions with obstructions or rear end collisions and 8 per cent were head-on collisions.
The most commonly cited contributing factors for crashes over the Christmas holiday period were losing control (43 per cent), travelling too fast for conditions (23 per cent), alcohol (19 per cent), inattention (19 per cent), failed to give way or stop (15 per cent), inexperience (14 per cent) and fatigue (10 per cent).
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