Dashcam footage shows scary near-miss as motorists avoid wrong-way driver on Waikato Expressway

The driver headed on to the Waikato Expressway off-ramp, nearly hitting oncoming vehicles.

A wrong-way driver came close to hitting two motorists in a frightening incident on the Waikato Expressway this week.

Dashcam footage captures a hatchback driver reversing off the southbound exit at 9.28pm on Tuesday after a near miss with a truck.

Now new information provided to the Herald reveals the incident was a second close call.

In what Jamie Seddon calls “sort of a scary moment”, the wrong-way driver had previously attempted to turn on to the southbound off-ramp.

Seddon was forced to slow down as he noticed the hatchback’s manoeuvre.

“If he was 10 seconds earlier, we would have been head-on at 100km/h.”

The wrong-way driver then stopped in the middle of the road as Seddon tried to communicate with him.

Ignoring his shouts and honks, the hatchback continued on to the motorway off-ramp, where it encountered the truck and scraped the barrier.

Seddon uses the off-ramp, which is clearly labelled “no entry” in the clip, nearly every day.

He called the police after the near miss and later saw officers responding to the scene near Pukekohe.

In a statement to the Herald, police said they “encourage the public to report any dangerous or unlawful driving to us through 111 if it is happening now, and 105 after the fact”.

“By making a report, this allows us to take any follow-up or enforcement action.”