Another 24 hours filled with fatal car crashes on our roads

Wednesday, 1 November 2017

Three people are dead after a major crash on a notoriously dangerous stretch of road in Northland.

Between 6.30pm on Tuesday and 11.15am on Wednesday, police across New Zealand were called out to three separate, fatal car crashes.

The first, in Christchurch on Tuesday evening, was a two-car crash that left one dead and three others hospitalised.

Then, just after 7am on Wednesday, police were called out in Dunedin. A 37-year-old man died after the vehicle he was in crashed into a power pole.

Just hours later, about 11.15am, emergency services were alerted to another crash.

Emergency services vehicles line the road at the scene of a crash that killed three people near Whangarei in Northland on Wednesday.

* New Zealand's road toll in five charts

* Road toll rising again after three decades of improvements**

A car involved in a serious crash in Dunedin on Wednesday morning.

This time, on State Highway 1 near Oakleigh in Northland. Three people died and two others were hospitalised. The crash, on a notoriously dangerous piece of road, involved a light truck and three cars.

The deaths bring the national road toll for 2017 to 313 so far.

They come less than a month after police described our roads as 'battle zones'.

Early in October, the road toll hit 293, and police predicted there would be sixty more deaths on our roads before the end of the year.

Road policing national manager Superintendent Steve Greally said: 'If we can get under 350 this year, I would take that as some sort of victory.

'Although it is a gutting one because one death is too many.'

In the three weeks since that warning, 20 more have died.