Two cars careen down bank in separate incidents

The picturesque Scenic Drive was the scene of two car crashes Saturday morning.

Two French tourists veered off the road at 10.30am and ended up several metres down a bank outside Elevation Café, which looks out over west Auckland from the Waitakere Ranges.

The tourists' Toyota Caldina stationwagon was too damaged to drive and had to be winched up the bank by tow truck.

"Crashes happen here all the time," said Dominique Church, who works at the cafe.

"Tourists really need to slow down," said café manager Cush Penfold. "They'd only been here three days. They don't know the roads."

The crash occurred just 500m from the Waiatarua Fire Station and officers were quickly on the scene to control traffic. Fire officer Ian Ford said such crashes happened at the rate of "a couple a month."

The tourists appeared shocked as they emptied the contents of their car, including rolls of money and stuffed backpacks with airline luggage tags attached, into a waiting police vehicle.

One kilometre west of the scene, a woman drove her silver Toyota Spacio car off a steep cliff at an unmarked lookout on a tight bend west of Parkinson Lookout at about 9am.

The vehicle had a "soft landing" 50m down in dense bush, Ford said.

Family quickly arrived at the scene between the Waiatarua Transmission Mast and Mountain Road.

Ford believed the driver was uninjured and walked back up the cliff. Her vehicle had lost both bumpers but appeared drivable.