Northland highway north of Kamo among country's most dangerous

Inspector Wayne Ewers carries out a speed sting at Kauri, part-way along a stretch of Northland road which has been identified as one of NZ's most dangerous state highways. Photo/Michael Cunningham

Northland's top roading cop is not surprised to hear a stretch of Northland highway has been named one of the country's most dangerous. But, Inspector Wayne Ewers says, it's primarily the actions of drivers that cause accidents, not the road itself.

The State Highway 1 stretch of road from Springs Flat, just north of Kamo, to Kawakawa - which measures just over 45 kilometres - makes the list of the 10 worst two-star regional highways, according to the Automobile Association.

"I agree with it, it's a serious piece of road," said Mr Ewers.

He said, as with any of Northland's roads, people needed to be alert and concentrating when they drove on it.

According to the data released by the AA, there were 14 deaths, 41 serious injuries and 133 minor injuries on that stretch of road from 2012 to 2016.

"There are places on that road that make it inherently dangerous, the corners and the weather, but, at the end of the day, people need to drive to the conditions," said Mr Ewers.

He said it was not necessarily the road but speed or not wearing a seatbelt or some other factor which caused the deaths, and many could be prevented.

"There's a whole lot of various reasons why these people have died."

Mr Ewers could recall at least five fatalities on that road this year, which would be in addition to the AA statistics.

"It comes back to driver behaviour - you drive to the conditions."

He said any improvements made to the road would make a difference.

The highway is the second-most deadly stretch of road on the list, behind State Highway 2 from Katikati to Tauranga which experienced 18 in the same time-frame.

Overall, the road sits 10th on the list, which is ranked by the likelihood of death or serious injury (DSI equivalent) per kilometre per year.

It has a DSI equivalent of 0.174 per kilometre per year. The top of the list is State Highway 22 from Drury to Pukekohe, which is 0.399.

The AA has released a list of New Zealand's worst regional state highways along with a call to for political parties to commit to 10 actions to improve road safety.

One of those actions is to lift the safety standards of regional roads.

AA's report said 39 per cent of New Zealand's State Highway network has a two-star safety rating as assessed by New Zealand road assessment programme KiwiRAP.

The AA wants 150km of two-star national and regional roads to be lifted to three star - according to KiwiRAP standards - every year.

In addition, it wants another $100 million each year into low-cost safety improvements on lower-volume regional roads.