Big increase in nation’s holiday road toll

Press, 1 June 1981, Page 1

Big increase in nation’s holiday road toll

NZPA . 4 Wellington The Queen’s Birthday week-end road toll stood at 11 late yesterday.

The holiday road toll was described by the Ministry of Transport as a “disaster.” The week-end, from 4 p.m. on Friday to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, is the worst Queen's Birthday for road fatalities since 1978, when 21 were killed. In 1979, six were killed. The toll in 1980 was seven. The Chief Traffic Superin-

tendent (Mr S. L. Young) said in Wellington last evening: “It’s the same old story. People have got to realise the problem is in their hands. “When they start regarding themselves as possible statistics we might get somewhere.” The toll so far was a shocking disaster, he said. The sad thing was that it was so unnecessary.

“People are hell-bent on self-destruction and the destruction of other people,” he said.

The Ministry’s figures do not include the death of a rally driver on a forestry road in Southland on Saturday. A Christchurch woman died in Buller Hospital on Saturday evening after she was hit by a car in Westport

earlier in the evening.. Shi was

Hilda Margaret Nelson, aged 83. A youth, aged 16, was killed when the car in which he was a passenger left the Ongarue-Waihiha road in King Country on Friday evening and rolled down a bank to within a few feet of the Main Trunk railway.

The southbound Northerner express train came across the car some time later. The train stopped and took two other injured persons from the car to Taumarunui, where they were admitted to hospital. The dead youth was Gainsford Takiwa, a scrubcutter, of Kakahi. At Lorneville, near Invercargill, a boy was killed when he was struck by a car while cycling with his brother on Saturday afternoon. He was John Antony Lee, aged 12, of Lorneville. His brother, Adrian, aged nine, was taken to Southland Hospital, where he was reported yesterday to be in a satisfactory conditon. A man was killed near Garston on Friday evening when the car in which he was a passenger was in collision with another. He was

Wade Douglas Driver, aged 23, of Twizel, who was a passenger in a utility.

Another person in the vehicle, Tania Watkins, aged 17, thought to be from Invercargill, was admitted to Southland Hospital with head injuries and is reported in a serious condition. A man died when the car he was a passenger in hit a telegraph pole on Te Rapa Road, Hamilton, at 10 p.m. He was

Noel Sydney Clarke, aged 39, of Hamilton. The other fataliities were:—

•A male pedestrian, aged 28, who died after being hit by a car on Saturday night in Mangere, Auckland.

•A male passenger, aged 20, involved in' a two-car collision at Glenbervie, Whangarei, on Saturday evening. •A male driver, aged 17, who was in a two-car collision at Waihi on Saturday evening. •A male pedestrian, aged 53, who was hit by a car at Spring Creek, Marlborough, on Saturday evening. •A male motor-cyclist, aged 18, who died after colliding with a car and going under a bus near Pukerua Bay on State highway 1, north of Wellington, on Saturday morning. •A man, aged 32, who died early on Saturday when his car ran off the road on State highway 3 at Hangatiki, near the Waitomo Caves.