Pregnant crash victim died on way from gig

File photo / Hawke's Bay Today

Police have named the pregnant woman killed in a head-on crash near Palmerston North on Saturday night.

Ann-Maree Hardiman, 42, from the Horowhenua was driving home after the Gin Wigmore concert in Palmerston North.

Around midnight, as she drove through Opiki, her car was struck by a vehicle travelling in the opposite direction, which appears to have crossed the centreline.

Ms Hardiman was seven months pregnant and neither she nor her unborn child survived the crash.

The passenger, also a 42-year-old Horowhenua woman, is in Palmerston North Hospital in a stable condition.

The driver of the other vehicle, an 18-year-old man believed to be from the Wairarapa, was also taken to Palmerston North Hospital where he remains in a critical condition.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Ms Hardiman was one of 12 people killed over the weekend - taking the weekend toll to four more than Labour Weekend.

Cyclist Patricia Anne Veronica Fraser, 43, died after being hit by a car in the Manawatu on Saturday about 3pm.

She had been training with her best friend for the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge on State Highway Three near Mount Stewart, police said.

Mrs Fraser, from Longburn, near Palmerston North, was married and had three daughters and a son aged from 5 to 13.

Her family was "devastated" by her death and had asked for privacy to grieve, police said.

Two other cyclists were killed when they were hit by a car on the wrong side of the road on a blind corner about 12km south of Morrinsville just after 9am on Sunday.

Mark Andrew Ferguson, 46, and Wilhelm Muller, 71, were also training for the Lake Taupo event.

Another cyclist, Kay Wolfe, 44, was this morning in a critical condition, and a fourth member of the group was recovering from minor injuries.

There were two other double fatalities, a head-on collision in Turangi in which a woman, 20, and her stepfather, 47, died, and last night's motorcycle crash at Patutahi near Gisborne in which a man and a woman lost their lives.

On Saturday, Peter Townsend of Hamilton died after crashing through a fence minutes after picking up his brand-new $20,000 motorbike.

South Korean student Goen Park, 23, was killed when he was thrown through the windscreen of a van which rolled on the West Coast.

Irishman Leslie Armitage, 23, died when his Land Rover crashed in Central Otago's Ida Valley; a man was killed when his car rolled on a rural road east of Hamilton and a cyclist died in a collision near Palmerston North.

In an off-road crash not in the official toll, 14-year-old Leslie Noema-Whakamoa died after being trapped under a vehicle which crashed on a four-wheel-drive track south of Whakatane.

- NZHERALD STAFF