12 dead in weekend road carnage

Mark Ferguson. Photo / Supplied

The distraught mother of one of two cyclists killed yesterday in a head-on collision with a car wants to know how the driver ended up on the wrong side of the road on a blind corner.

Mark Andrew Ferguson, 46, and Wilhelm Muller, 71, died when the vehicle hit a group of cyclists about 12km south of Morrinsville just after 9am.

Another cyclist, Kay Wolfe, 44, was this morning in a critical condition, and a fourth member of the group was recovering from minor injuries.

The crash was one of nine fatal smashes in one of the blackest weekends on the roads this year - 12 people and an unborn baby were killed.

The latest collision occurred at 9.15 last night when a man and a woman died after their motorcycle crashed on Lavenham Rd at Patutahi, 20km northwest of Gisborne.

In the Morrinsville tragedy, the force of the car's impact with the cyclists was so strong that emergency services had to cut the roof off to get the 23-year-old female driver out.

Mr Ferguson's mother, Sonia, said she never thought she would bury her youngest son.

"I can't believe what's happened. I don't really know where I am at the moment," said Mrs Ferguson. "I just miss him terribly. We all do. I shall miss his cheeky comments. It's going to be very hard. It won't be the same without Mark around."

Mrs Ferguson said her son was a "good fella. We're joking one moment, and I'm crying the next. I just don't understand ... How or where, why. All these questions go in your mind.

"How did she [the driver] get where she was? What was she doing? What was she thinking? Why can't they drive carefully?"

Police recovered Mr Ferguson's helmet after the crash but his mother stopped them from giving it to his partner, Rachael Dohrman, because it would be too hard. Mrs Ferguson could not bear to look at the helmet either.

A distraught Ms Dohrman said through tears: "At least they died doing what they loved."

She said Mr Ferguson had been preparing for the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge to raise money for Heart Children New Zealand. His friends would now ride in his place.

Mr Ferguson and Mr Muller were members of the Morrinsville Wheelers Club. About 10 members had been on their regular Sunday ride around rural roads when the tragedy occurred.

Patron Rex Thorley said Mr Muller was a leader in the club and "just a good, normal man, doing what he loved. What can you say? I've lost two good friends, and maybe a third one."

Last night, Roger Wolfe said of his wife's condition in Waikato Hospital: "It's touch and go. She's still in a coma and still critical. It's up to her to pull through."

Police were unable to say whether speed or alcohol were factors in the crash. But early indications were that the car went around a blind corner on the wrong side of the road. The driver, reportedly on her way to work, suffered moderate injuries. No one was at her Morrinsville home last night.

Sergeant Graham McGurk said the tragedy would "severely hit" the Morrinsville community. "It's going to be very devastating."

Responsible Cyclists Association founder Rowan Larsen said although it looked as though there was little the victims could have done to avoid the crash, it highlighted a need for all road users to improve behaviour.

"All road users - motorists and cyclists and pedestrians too - have to lift their game," he said.

"There is so much that is out of our control but what we can do is ensure we are riding responsibly - not obstructing traffic flows, and trying to be as visible as possible and polite to motorists at all times.

"That will hopefully cut down a lot of the risk, but incidents like this show you can never eliminate the risk."

No one from police national headquarters returned calls to comment on the weekend's carnage.

But Waitemata District road policing manager Superintendent John Kelly said that with summer now here, many people were beginning to head out on holiday and therefore driving longer distances.

He said lots of people who were in "holiday mode" were forgetting simple road safety rules.

"We're driving longer distances and on unfamiliar roads, as the summer holidays arrive, and every now and then we have one of these tragic weekends."

Mr Kelly said he understood that alcohol played a factor in at least some of the weekend's accidents, and speed and fatigue were also big issues.

"Talk to any road expert and they'll tell you that speed is the big one. If you reduce speed and we can reduce mean speeds, then we can save lives.

"Fatigue will become a bigger issue in summer. We'll be driving at different times of the day and for longer. People who feel that they are tired and continue to drive - thinking that they will make it - are risking lives.

"The next thing you know you're asleep and you've crashed and killed someone."

The Automobile Association said drivers being distracted at a time of the year of extra traffic on the roads was a likely cause of "a very black weekend".

Motoring affairs manager Mike Noon said although the road toll was still running below last year's - which ended at 384, compared with 365 in 2008 - it would not take many more such weekends to lose the edge.

By Friday, 316 people had died on the roads since January 1, 19 fewer than for the same period of last year.

* Rachael Dohrman has invited people to donate to a charity Mark Ferguson cared a lot for. Go to:everydayhero.co.nz/coro_club
- additional reporting: Mathew Dearnaley