Road safety cops in near-miss

Senior Sergeant Greg Brown in front of the power pole he nearly ploughed into, thanks to a driver using a cellphone. Photo / Warren Buckland

A driver distracted by his cellphone almost took out Hawke's Bay's road policing manager, Senior Sergeant Greg Brown, yesterday.

Mr Brown and a colleague were driving on Farndon Rd toward Napier, to a meeting about road safety around schools, when a car veered onto the wrong side of the road as it came around a moderate bend.

"Even though I see the carnage caused by crashes and poor decision-making, you never really expect it to happen to you," he said.

"It was a really close call. I had to brake hard and swerve suddenly to avoid it.

"Suddenly I am staring at an approaching power pole and the real prospect of slamming into it.

"On a road like Farndon there isn't much margin for error and the prospect of sliding side-on into a power pole is not a great feeling, I can tell you."

Mr Brown said he was thankful he was doing only 80km/h.

"That gave me time to react and recover. Likewise for the offending driver, who also reacted suddenly."

When Mr Brown pulled over the driver, he stated he had been checking his cellphone after it "dinged".

The driver thought he was unlucky that he had done this in front of two police officers.

"I think he has a bad habit that will hopefully change as a result of today's near-miss," Mr Brown said.

"There would be a certain amount of irony after all the work we do to rid our roads of drivers on their cellphones, if we had been wiped out because of a distracted driver."

On returning to the station, Mr Brown discovered his team had been out on cellphone campaigns, catching 20 drivers using their phones in just one hour.

"This is not good - this is consistent with the previous days when 10 to 20 drivers were caught."

After working on a Facebook video promoting the cellphone campaign, he and Sergeant Kris Eckhold came across a perfect example of how enforcement and education combine to make positive change.

The pair saw a truck driver pull over to use his cellphone on the expressway. The driver explained that the week before, a colleague had been caught on his cellphone while driving.

The company boss had laid down the law to all drivers at a team meeting following that.

Mr Brown has a simple message for motorists.

"If your phone rings or beeps, ignore it. If you have to answer it, pull over safely before you do.

"You don't want to be responsible for killing someone as a result of a phone call or text - no call is that important."