No video on the Herald’s websites and social media channels was watched more in 2025 than the three seconds of madness shown by an impatient truckie who swung right at the Transmission Gully Kenepuru interchange in a bolshy bid to beat another driver.
The ill-advised shortcut at the roundabout north of Wellington was captured by an NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) camera and clocked 29 million views after it was reported by the Herald in February.
“To state the obvious, it’s illegal to go the wrong way around a roundabout to cut in front of people,” NZTA tut-tutted in its own post to social media.
A fellow truckie was more blunt.
“Someone got their licence from the Weet-Bix box.”
The Snake Escape
It was a close encounter of the venomous kind when Folco Faber had a narrow escape from a deadly snake in his adopted country of Australia.
Even though there’s no place in the world easier for New Zealanders to meld into than that big continent to the west, there’s still the odd tickle that reminds you you’re not in Taranaki anymore.
Kiwi expat Faber was cuddling his cat Lily, only to realise a deadly eastern brown snake had invited itself into their Adelaide home.
CCTV footage captured the encounter and one second before when Faber unknowingly stood on the viper known to be responsible for more snakebite deaths in Australia than any of its venomous cousins.
However, the reptile’s reaction was subdued, something a snake catcher revealed may have been due to its own ordeal in the company of Faber’s furry friend – it’d suffered several cat bites.
Pensioner’s wild Waiheke ride
Waiheke has seen its share of less-than-salubrious antics.
But when a drink-driving pensioner smashed over a bike shed, through a railing and into the water off the Hauraki Gulf island’s main ferry terminal in August, it turned heads around the world.
CCTV footage of the lead-footed 73-year-old sinking her 4WD at Matiatia Wharf soon bounced worldwide thanks to social media.
More fortuitous was the sole occupant’s escape – despite being clad in a long winter jacket and shoes, the woman, later fined after police found she had an excess breath alcohol level of 290mcg/litre, managed to extract herself from the sinking vehicle as stunned witnesses tossed life rings from the wharf.
Kicking towards a bright-yellow ladder, a bystander then guided her to safety as the stricken 4WD disappeared into the depths, its windscreen wipers sloshing hopelessly against the seawater.
‘It’s just what we do around here’
“Nah,” said Chase Gage when the Herald asked if he was afraid riding a horse he barely knew through floodwaters to rescue a tethered horse whose paddock had turned to river.
“It’s just what we do around here.”
Gage, who runs Native Treks with his partner Georgina Hudson, and borrowed horse Kotiro saved the horse tied to a submerged post in neck-deep water after the Waioeka River near Ōpōtiki flooded in June.
Video posted online showed Kotiro and a barefoot, singlet-and-shorts-clad Gage guiding the horse to safety, with the Waioeka Pā dad bemused by the fuss.
“It was just the usual kind of flood that you might get with a bit of heavy rain. I love riding in those … I took my family [recently] up the flood, in the bush. It’s good.”
Highway heroes
It’s not every day you see legs sticking out of a car and men in high-vis gear running down a busy Auckland motorway.
Sharp-eyed motorist Jeff Benjamin and two others had left the safety of their own vehicles during rush hour on the Northwestern Motorway in February to stop a slow-moving, but out-of-control car.
The driver was having a seizure and Benjamin – his legs dangling out the driver’s window – managed to climb part-way in and veer the hatchback to safety before yanking the handbrake.
Arborist Shivan Ramkissoon, recovering after suffering the first seizure of his life, later told the Herald he was shocked at the selflessness and bravery of those who risked their own lives to come to his aid.
“I feel really lucky.”
The lawnmower shop and the unexpected fireworks show
Customers got a lot more excitement than they might’ve expected from a visit to a lawnmower shop in November when fireworks began exploding around their feet.
Several shoppers and staff were inside Papakura Lawnmowers when the South Auckland store got caught in the crossfire as two people driving past allegedly began throwing fireworks at a pedestrian passing the shop’s entrance.
As well as striking the man and leaving him with a golf-ball-sized welt to his throat, another shopper injured her back in the melee, with an ambulance called to treat both.
“All we heard was bang, bang … my initial thought [was] it could’ve been some sort of firearm.
“We didn’t understand what was going on until we saw the pretty colours.”
Two people were later arrested and charged, but they may be considering themselves lucky if that was all.
As they took off down the street, Webster’s colleague initially gave chase with a makeshift weapon he’d grabbed on his way out – a 30cm-long ride-on lawnmower blade.
