The scene of a car crash that killed a 7-year-old boy on the Hawke's Bay Expressway this morning.
The scene of a car crash that killed a 7-year-old boy on the Hawke's Bay Expressway this morning.
A 7-year-old boy has died after a serious car crash in Napier this morning.
The boy was in a car that hit another vehicle that had stopped in a line of traffic at a roadworks site on the Pandora Bridge on the Hawke's Bay Expressway.
The crash happened onthe highway between the Prebensen Rd roundabout and the Hawke's Bay Airport.
Police say the boy was in the back seat of a Mazda that drove into the back of another car that was sitting in a line of stationary traffic.
Senior Constable Cory Ubels of the Serious Crash Unit said a woman was driving towards Hawke's Bay airport approaching a queue of traffic stopped at Pandora Bridge where roadworks were being done.
Temporary traffic signals are operating allowing traffic to cross the bridge on a single lane while work is carried out.
The car crashed into the back of a 300m queue of traffic, hitting the car in front "pretty hard".
Mr Ubels said the car in front of the one hit had heard the approaching car and had the foresight to move out of the queue and on to the side of the road.
This meant it was not also hit from behind.
There is signage alerting drivers to the roadworks but Mr Ubels said the police were investigating if it was appropriate.
A witness to today's crash said they had "seen the crash coming for days" due to the lack of signage in the area.
Travelling that route every day, he had noticed a lot of drivers had to slam on their brakes when they came to the temporary 30km road works zone.
