Night crash victim lay dead in field

One accident over the weekend included a car that rolled in Grey Lynn. Photo / Doug Sherring

A man lay dead unnoticed in a paddock for up to eight hours after being flung from his car in a midnight crash.

Ian Walls, known to his friends as Chubb, rolled his car off State Highway 1 in Marlborough on his way home from the town of Ward around midnight on Friday.

He was one of two people to die and two to be critically injured during a day of carnage around the country.

Volunteer firefighter Lindsay Green discovered Walls in a ditch on his property while driving to work yesterday morning.

"There were people on the roads who had stopped and I knew straight away he [was dead]," Green said.

Emergency services searched the area for other occupants but did not find anyone else.

Longtime friend Ian Partner said Walls' death had rocked the community.

"He was the salt of the earth," Partner said. "It is a sad loss to the community and it is devastating."

He said Walls' home was open to anyone, including his ex-partner's son who had his 18th birthday yesterday.

Walls was known for his love of crayfishing and the Crusaders rugby team.

Police are investigating the cause of the accident.

In another crash, a motorcyclist was killed in a head-on collision in Hawke's Bay yesterday afternoon.

The man in his 50s was leading a group of five riders along Raukawa Rd, approximately 20km south of Hastings, when his machine and an unregistered car collided about 3pm.

One of the first police officers on the scene was a friend of the deceased.

The man at the scene did not want to be named, but said he understood the dead man collided with the side of the car, severing his leg. He was the front rider in a group of about five motorcyclists.

Raukawa Rd resident Susan Mouat lives closest to the scene and heard the impact.

"I just heard a bang and someone went out and then called that they needed an ambulance."

The road was unmarked and windy, Mouat said.

In accident, one person was critically injured in a head-on crash in Rolleston, Canterbury. Paramedics found one person trapped and unconscious in a car shortly after 4.15pm.

Ambulances took two people to Christchurch Hospital's emergency department.

And in Thames, a 21-year-old woman was in a critical condition last night after her car rolled on a rural road near Thames. Fire crews cut her from the wreckage before she was airlifted to hospital.

"It was a high-speed accident. The car was pretty mangled," Westpac Rescue Helicopter pilot Lance Donnelly said.

And an Auckland family had a lucky escape when their car and a Green Acres home cleaning services vehicle collided yesterday.

Ponsonby fire station officer Chris Delfos said a Honda CRV, with two adults and two children, flipped on to its roof after the collision at the intersection of Murdoch Rd and Scanlan St, trapping the family.

Neighbours from properties near the intersection came out to help the family from the car before emergency services arrived, he said.

The family were treated for shock and a woman from the Green Acres vehicle was treated for shock and whiplash.