“When it comes to road safety it’s all about people driving to the conditions. It’s about fatigue, it’s about pulling over and stopping. The number of causes of accidents, a lot of it is fatigue or it is a distraction and speed as well.”
McDaniel said a lot of people were going to be affected by the crash.
“It’s tragic for everyone to deal with.”
An investigation into the cause of the crash is underway.
It comes after two people died and a third was moderately injured in a crash on the same stretch of road earlier this month.
Emergency services responded to a pile-up on Main North Rd/State Highway 1, near Sefton, shortly after 10am on January 8.
McDaniel earlier confirmed the earlier double-fatal collision was between two cars.
“It appears that one vehicle left the side of the road and collided with another coming from the opposite direction.
“We do not know the cause, but we know that one vehicle has crossed the centre line, hitting the other. We are still ascertaining the cause of the collision,” McDaniel said the day after the crash.
Images from the crash scene showed debris from a flipped silver Hilux ute strewn across the road and a host of emergency workers at the crash site. A silver Corolla was off the road, in bushes, and had been covered with a sheet.
Sam Sherwood is a Christchurch-based reporter who covers crime. He is a senior journalist who joined the Herald in 2022, and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.
