2018 road toll rises to 382 after man dies in hospital

A second passenger has died after a crash last month - taking last year's road toll up to 382.

The 29-year-old man died at Wellington Regional Hospital yesterday after being seriously injured in a car crash on December 20 in Nelson.

The mother of the victim, who did not want to be identified, told the Herald her son was a passenger and was thrown out of the back of the vehicle after it reportedly lost control, left the road and rolled.

"We're all just devastated by this,'' she said through tears.

"He was not the driver - he was a victim.''

Last year's road toll is the deadliest on our roads since 2009, when 384 people lost their lives.

The death toll is taken according to when a crash or accident occurred, not when the person died.

The young man was one of several people injured in the crash in the early hours of that Thursday on Whakatu Drive, in Stoke, Nelson.

Those injured were aged in their 20s and 30s, authorities said at the time.

Emergency services were called to the scene just after 12.30am.

He is the second person to have died in the same crash; after a 25-year-old woman from the West Coast was killed.

She was one of three passengers thrown from the vehicle after it reportedly lost control, left the road and rolled. The driver received serious injuries.

About half an hour before that crash, just after midnight in Auckland, a person was killed after a car hit a power pole in Green Bay.

A second person was critically injured in the crash.