New Zealand’s worst road toll was 50 years ago, but tragedies still haunt our highways

Police are hitting the roads in numbers in the name of prevention. Even the boss is on deck, Eastern District road policing manager Inspector Angela Hallett. Photo / Warren Buckland

It’s been fifty years since New Zealand recorded its worst-ever road toll of 843 - with close to 70 of those in Hawke’s Bay.

Safety on the roads has come a long way since 1973, but police are desperate we do better - just one fatality is too many Eastern District road policing manager Inspector Angela Hallett notes.

This season is all about visibility, presence and prevention, with police guided by statistics, such as the 17 fatalities on Hawke’s Bay roads this year being 17 too many.

Memories guide them, too, such as those of highways officer Gerald (Ged) Corkery, who was the first on the job on the night of Hawke’s Bay’s worst crash - September 10, 1995, when eight people died as a house bus plunged 50 metres off State Highway 5′s Mohaka Bridge.

The tragedy remains a beacon in a region that has had more than its share of major road tragedies.

Since 1990, more than 14,470 people have died on New Zealand roads, 904 in the Hawke’s Bay Today circulation area – ranging from 55 in 1990 in a nationwide tally of 729, to six in 2013 when the national toll of 253, now the lowest in the last 73 years.

In the past 34 years, there have been 110 fatalities in the Wairoa District, 142 in the Napier area, 361 in the Hastings District, 127 in Central Hawke’s Bay, and 163 in Tararua.

But while things appear over time to be trending downwards the 2013 experience, now seems like a blip – Hawke’s Bay’s annual tolls have been more-than or close-to treble that low in eight of the 10 years since.

Simply, as Corkery and Hallett highlight, New Zealand drivers are not doing enough to keep themselves safe.

Seventeen dead in the wider Hawke’s Bay area is 17 too many.

Driver behaviour is one of the keys, they say. Drink-driving (or “impaired” driving), exceeding speed limits or driving unsafely in the conditions, and distractions (cellphones near the top of the list) are the main focuses.

There are always other bad behaviours though - a lasting memory of the first fatal crash I attended as a cadet reporter, around Te Hauke in 1973-1974 was the scattered burger and chips through the wreckage of a car that had overturned late at night on State Highway 2.

The scene after the housebus crash at the Mohaka Bridge between Napier and Taupō in 1995 - eight people were killed in a fall of 50 metres after crashing through the bridge barrier. Photo / NZME

Corkery, who started with the Napier City Council Traffic Department in the mid-1980s and went through first the merger with the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry traffic integration with police, has lasting memories, too.

For one, he was in the Napier station watchhouse on what was otherwise a quiet Sunday night 28 years ago when a driver using radio-telephone on State Highway 5 called to ask if police were aware of a crash at the Mohaka Bridge, 55km away.

They weren’t, so the driver, who’d noticed the gaping hole in the railing about centre-bridge, went back, looked over the side in the dark, and reported there seemed to be a bus on the riverbed 50 metres below.

“A bus ... you mean a bus ?” police asked.

It became apparent the bus had already been in police sights that night, when, after receiving reports of its erratic passage on the highway it was stopped by an officer who took the driver back to Napier for drink-driving processing, but also demobilised the bus to prevent it being driven, because none of those who remained was in a position to take the wheel.

He expected the passengers to settle for the night, but somehow it was restarted and driven by someone (never proven who) with possibly no experience driving such a vehicle.

The structure and weight proportion of the bus had been compromised by the addition of extra accommodation space at the rear.

It yawed for more than 100 metres down the hill onto the bridge, skewed at right angles to the railing, and went over.

New Zealand’s worst crash was on February 7, 1963, when 15 people were killed after a bus left the road on the Brynderwyn Hills, north of Auckland after the passengers had been at Waitangi Day festivities attended by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. Hawke’s Bay travellers have figured in several of the other worst days and nights on New Zealand roads.

Seven members of a Hawke’s Bay family were killed in a head-on crash on State Highway 1 near Atiamuri between Taupō and Tokoroa, mid-morning on Sunday, April 28, 2019, and there have been at least three crashes within Hawke’s Bay with six fatalities each in Hawke’s Bay.

On September 23, 1967, four Napier harriers on their way to a running event in Gisborne and two occupants of another vehicle were killed in a head-on crash on State Highway 2 north of Tūtira.

On March 8, 1992, three boys and three girls, aged 17-19 years, were killed in a head-on crash on State Highway 2 at Waiaruhe, south of Dannevirke, and on Christmas Eve in the same year five students in one vehicle and the male sole occupant of an oncoming car, which crossed the centreline, crashed on State Highway 2 near Takapau.

Tragedy also hit a Hawke’s Bay whānau when six people (three children and three adults) were killed in a head-on crash near Rangitaiki, on State Highway 5 between Napier and Taupo, on January 8, 1999.

Corkery accepts working through the holidays is perhaps the most important part of the job, as police, the Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and other road safety interests reinforce the messages they’ve been extolling all year, concentrating on prevention, or the Road to Zero.

The key from the police point of view is high visibility, particularly on the highways with the Napier-Taupō highway’s “Stay Alive on 5″ campaign some evidence of something working, along, police would say, with the reduction of the speed limit from 100km/h to 80km/h on more than half of its laneway since February 2022.

When vehicles are stopped there are the standard checks of warrant of fitness and use of restraints, and breath tests.

“If a driver is stopped at 11 in the morning,” says Hallett, “they can expect to be breath-tested.”

Every patrol on the road has the equipment and the procedure can be completed at the roadside, a far-reach than the days, Corkery recalls, of “blow-in-the-bag” and “you are required to accompany an officer to the nearest police station for further testing without delay”.

Corkery said a lot of people object to some of the measures taken to stop people getting killed on the road, but “90 per cent think we are doing a good job”.

The warning from Hallett is don’t drink and drive, don’t use the cellphone and avoid other distractions while driving, give yourself plenty of time from A-to-B, drive at speeds appropriate to the conditions and don’t exceed the limit.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.