The bike collided with her head-on and she was thrown into the air.
“I ended up with a broken leg. It was a spiral fracture of my tibia and I had to have that fixed in surgery, so they put a plate in my leg.”
She had to take a year off from her job as a kindergarten teacher after the accident.
“I need to be able to jump up and run across a playground... the healing just took a really long time.”
Joanne recently had to take a further three weeks off work to get the plate removed from her leg, which was giving her pain.
The rider who caused the accident was never found and after a few months of searching police closed the file.
“They sent the dogs out as I was being loaded on to the ambulance. I saw a policeman with a sniffer dog and he was, you know, trying to find the guy. But yeah, they never found him.”
Three years on, Joanne said she is still haunted by the noise of motorbikes.
“I’m terrified. If I hear a motorbike even not close by... I haven’t quite got over that.”
She said it was not until after her accident that she realised how big an issue dirt bikes were.
“That’s a known problem in the park. People who live nearby have the bikers going through their properties and cutting through alleyways and stuff because it’s a big park and you just can’t close every exit... the entry I took into the park is closed to dirt bikers but other places aren’t.”
Now Joanne believes dirt bikers need dedicated areas where they can go “rip up the park” to avoid more accidents.
“I’ve heard of other people being hurt in that park. I heard of a young mum with a pram... someone’s going to get killed in that park or somewhere else in New Zealand.”
Sonia lives in Hamilton near a scenic walkway and, like the park where Joanne was hit, she said dirt bikes in the area are a serious accident waiting to happen.
She told Checkpoint she has had to call police multiple times over fears about dangerous riders.
“The dirt bikes [are] going back and forth up on the Te Awa River Ride where you have cyclists, people walking, walking dogs, loads of people and they just treat it like their personal playground.
“The riders don’t tend to have helmets. So they’ve got balaclavas or caps and they’re doing wheel stands... it’s undulating, so the visibility is not always good, and I kind of half expect them to take someone out.
“But the worst was seeing them ride one-handed, holding like a toddler, maybe 2 or 3 years old on the petrol tank.”
Sonia said the bikes travel at speeds of up to 60km/h, which has led her to worry about the injuries they may cause.
“There’s just high foot traffic and young families and things like that. They might not be able to get out of the way of one of these bikes... they could definitely cause some massive, massive catastrophe.”
She said while police had responded to her calls in the past, nothing was done to stop the dirt bikers.
“It seemed like 10 minutes later they were back out riding again... maybe you need to impound them when they’re doing stuff like that.”
New Zealand Police told Checkpoint that communities needed to come forward and proactively provide them with information – including who was involved and the addresses they were coming and going from.
Police said without such information their capability to respond was limited.
They want to hear reports of any unlawful or dangerous riding behaviour, and ask people to gather as much information as safely possible – including registrations, bike descriptions and any video footage that can be safely captured.
They said if bikes are in the neighbourhood and it is happening now, call 111 or, if they have left the area or it happened previously, call 105.
– RNZ
