Police are planning a high profile on Hawke's Bay highways today, hoping to complete a third fatality-free Christmas-New Year holiday period in theregion in a row, after its first single-figure annual road toll in more than 50 years.
By late yesterday there had been no serious smashes on Hawke's Bay and Gisborne/East Coast roads since the holiday road toll season, which started at 4pm on Christmas Eve and ends at 6am tomorrow. However, there had been six deaths nationwide.
It comes after a 2013 Hawke's Bay road toll of just six, barely a quarter of the 2012 toll of 23, less than half the previous 50-year low of 16 recorded in 2008, and less than a tenth of the peaks of more than 60 deaths in the 1970s.
The provisional national toll for 2013, of 254, is the lowest since the 1950s, comparing most dramatically with the peak of 873 in 1973.
Significantly, the death of a 90-year-old woman after a car left State Highway 2 near Waihua, south of Wairoa, in June was the only fatality on Hawke's Bay's major highways network last year. In 2011 there were 10, and the previous year 11.