Road toll creeps up in Hawke’s Bay

Pictured is the beachfront route on State Highway 51 south of Napier with damage from one incident. Road safety improvements are taking place this year as part of the Road to Zero plan to curb the road toll. Photo / Warren Buckland

Two fatalities in last month have taken the provisional road toll in the Hawke’s Bay and Tararua area this year to seven, the most in the first four months of the year since 2019 and more than double the total to April 30 last year.

Ministry of Transport provisional online statistics show there were nine fatalities in the area in 2019 across the January 1 - April 30 period, four in the same period in 2020 (which included five weeks of the first Covid-19 lockdown), four in the same period of 2021 and three in the opening four months of last year.

But while the toll in the area has climbed, the provisional nationwide toll to the end of April at midnight was 111, the lowest since 2020, when there’d been 96 fatalities.

There have been three fatalities on Tararua District roads this year, and two each in the Hastings and Central Hawke’s Bay districts, but none in the Wairoa district or Napier.

The most recent were two separate fatalities in crashes just three days apart - a single-vehicle crash on State Highway 2 near Takapau early on the morning of April 21, and a collision involving a truck and a car at the intersection of Te Mata Mangateretere and Waimarama Roads in Havelock North late on the morning of April 24.

The nationwide road toll last year was 378, up 60 from 318 the previous year and in 2021. The annual toll has been under 300 just three times since 1950, most recently in 2014.

A joint Ministry of Transport and Police Road to Zero monitoring report for 2022 is due by the end of July, but the most recent of the annual reports, from 2021, said the strategy was to cut the nationwide toll by 40 per cent in the decade 2020-2030.

Ministry of Transport director Bryan Sherritt said when the 2021 report was released: “An 11 per cent reduction in deaths and serious injuries since 2018 shows improvements are being made and are a result of progress across a range of Road to Zero actions.”

As part of the strategy, Ministry of Transport highways management agency Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency reduced the maximum speed limit on about 76 kilometres of State Highway 5 between Napier and Taupō from 100km/h to 80km/h in February 2022 and on parts of the State Highway 51 coastal route south of Napier in October, while similar adjustments have been made by councils on secondary roads, along with other limits within more urban areas.

Physical improvements are being made on SH51, including a 3km stretch between the intersections with Ellison St, Napier and Awatoto Rd in three years to mid-2021. The improvements include a roundabout at the Awatoto intersection, through which traffic has increased due to Te Awa residential development.

Waka Kotahi director of land transport Kane Patena said with last July’s report release: “We know people make mistakes, so we need to create forgiving roads and roadsides, make our speed limits safe and get more people into safe vehicles so that those simple mistakes don’t cost people their lives.”