'Dangerous' highway worries locals

The accident scene yesterday morning.

State Highway 2 at Te Puna has been branded dangerous by a passenger involved in the latest in a string of tragedies on the road.

Three women died when the van they were travelling in was involved in a collision with a car, about 200m east of Ainsworth Rd.

Local resident Sam O'Brien was travelling as a passenger in the car and told the Bay of Plenty Times he thought the stretch of road was dangerous.

Mr O'Brien said it was always risky when he attempted to enter or exit his driveway, which was in the middle of a 200m long straight.

It's a 90km/h zone but everyone pumps it up more than that.

Sam O'Brien

"We come out here and look for cars and that's about all you can see," he said, gesturing to a distance of about 100m east of the driveway before it is cut off by trees.

"If there are cars coming, you're totalled," he said.

The accident scene yesterday morning.

"It's a 90km/h zone but everyone pumps it up more than that. I indicate from way down there [when driving home] and people don't pull back until I begin braking to try to get in my driveway.

"It's a really dangerous road."

The crash happened a stone's throw from where a pedestrian was killed after being hit by a truck in January and only a few hundred metres from where a man died in a Boxing Day collision near Te Puna Quarry Rd.

Pedestrian Grant Frederick Coley's death was the ninth in 13 months on the highway between Bethlehem and Waihi, and the second death on the road this year, until Saturday.

The stretch of SH2 between Bethlehem and Waihi is ranked 14th on the national risk list of highways. In Ministry of Transport figures for 2014, the average social cost for each Bay of Plenty fatal crash on state highways including SH2 was $4,688,000 and $1,119,000 for crashes resulting in serious injury.

In the five years between 2009 and 2013 there were four fatal, 26 serious and 72 minor crashes on the stretch.

No one from the New Zealand Transport Agency, which oversees the highway, could be reached yesterday.