Auckland wheelchair user died because of inaccessible pedestrian crossing – coroner

Monday, 14 March 2022

The Government is working on a road safety strategy to drive substantial improvements in road safety in New Zealand. (Video first published in December 2019)

Four years on from an elderly man being run down in his wheelchair, Auckland Transport is yet to make any changes to the crossing a coroner labelled as the primary factor in the crash.

William Wiki Teoi was hit by a car while crossing East Tamaki Rd in Ōtara and died later at Middlemore Hospital from heart failure in March 2018.

The 84-year-old had been trying to cross the busy four-lane road because a nearby pedestrian crossing was not accessible in his wheelchair.

At the time, Auckland Transport said the road was not the primary contributing factor, but said it would upgrade the crossing and renew road markings.

East Tamaki Rd, Ōtara, near where William Wiki Teoi was struck by a car while crossing in his wheelchair in 2018.

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Sarah Dean, founder of the Road Traffic Accident Trauma Charitable Trust, hopes a national road trauma centre will be a hub for clinical care, research and safety initiatives.

So far neither of those things has been done.

In a recently released finding, Coroner Alexander Ho emphatically refuted AT’s stance, calling Wiki Teoi’s death “preventable”.

“I do not accept AT’s conclusion that the road was not the primary contributing factor to the crash,” Coroner Ho said. “It was.”

He said the only reason why Wiki Teoi was navigating through uncontrolled traffic was because AT did not provide a safe signalled crossing for mobility users to cross a busy arterial road.

The police serious crash unit also pointed to the lack of accessibility at the crossing as a contributing factor, alongside the fact Wiki Teoi crossed between cars stopped at the lights.

CCTV at a nearby shop showed him waiting at a driveway then heading out into traffic on the busy road.

He crossed the westbound lanes easily, but because of backed-up traffic at the lights he had to weave through parked cars.

As he moved out from between the stationary vehicles, he was hit by the front right of a car in a free-flowing eastbound lane, spun and toppled over.

Wiki Teoi was taken to hospital with broken, displaced ribs.

While he was under observation he suffered heart failure and died, which Coroner Ho attributed to various co-morbidities as well as the injuries sustained during the crash.

Ho called on AT to finish the work to make the crossing near where Wiki Teoi died safer, as well as for AT to review all signalled crossings to make sure they were compliant with accessibility regulations.

“The risk factors that led to Mr Wiki Teoi’s accident are still present. I can do no more than reiterate, with the strongest possible force, the recommendation that I have made above,” Coroner Ho said.

“There has already been one unnecessary fatality as a result of mobility users being unable to access the signalled crossing.

“It is desirable that this accessibility issue be promptly remedied.”

The coroner’s findings referenced a letter from an AT manager saying there had been delays in implementing the changes, and they were scheduled to be completed by “late 2022/early 2023”.

The changes had initially been slated to be finished by the end of 2019.

AT spokeswoman Natalie Polley said they acknowledged the coroner’s findings and called Wiki Teoi’s death “an absolute tragedy”.

She said it was a “heart-breaking reminder of the importance of ensuring our roads and crossings are all safe for our communities”.

Polley said the safety upgrade was in the advanced development stage and AT was expecting to update the community on progress in coming months.