Week-end road toll lowest since 1979

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 2

Week-end road toll lowest since 1979

PA Wellington The Labour Day week-end holiday officially ended at 8 a.m. yesterday when Ministry of Transport officials reported the lowest road death toll since 1979.

For statistical purposes the week-end ran from 4 p.m. on Friday until 8 a.m. yesterday during which time eight people, all under the age of 26. died in traffic accidents.

The toll was 10 during Labour Day week-end last year and nine in 1980. It was 16 in 1978.

The final fatality during the week-end involved an accident in Manukau City on Monday morning when a boy was thrown from a car which rolled over. The week-end toll reached eight with the death of a youth on Monday who was in an accident near Whakatane on Saturday. He was Daniel Paul Mohi, aged 15. of

Maketu, west of Whakatane.

The police said his motorcycle and a truck collided on the road through Rotoehu forest, between Te Puke and Rotorua. The youth was not wearing a crash helmet. A spokesman for the Ministry of Transport said yesterday morning that all the fatalities involved single vehicles. With the exception of the eighth accident all deaths arose from vehicles leaving a road and hitting an object off the road. “There may well be a common factor in these accidents but we have not yet had time to study them to make an assessment,” the spokesman said. He said that considering the bad weather in many parts of the central North Island and in the South Island, the fall in the accident rate was encouraging.