Fewer holiday fatalities

Press, 2 January 1985, Page 1

Fewer holiday fatalities

A man was killed when the car he was driving struck a bridge on the Kaituna Valley Road at 3.16 a.m. yesterday. He was Andrew Walter Tweddle, aged 33. A female passenger in the car was not injured. Mr Tweddle, who lived in Australia, was visiting his family in New Zealand. The holiday road toll stands at 11, the Press Association reports. At the corresponding time in last year’s Christmas holiday period, the road toll was 16. A man, aged 24, died

when the car he was driving hit a bridge on State highway 27 near Morrinsville at 1.45 a.m. yesterday. He was the only occcupant of the _ car. The provisional road toll for, 1984 is 662, the Ministry of Transport said yesterday. This compares with 644 in 1983, 674 in 1982, and 670 in 1981. The assistant chief traffic superintendent, Mr Henry Gore, said the year started poorly on the roads, with the monthly tolls from February to June higher than the previous year’s, peaking in May when 74 died, com-

pared with 47 in 1983. The toll had then started to drop. This year’s Christmas holiday toll of 11 was so far the lowest for at least seven years. The year’s toll was best looked at in the context of the number of deaths per 10,000 cars registered, Mr Gore said. “It looks like 1984 should be about 3.5 per 10,000 cars, compared with 3.4 in 1983. “But if one looks at earlier years, it is coming down. In 1981 and 1982 it was 3.6 and in, for example, 1936 the rate was 10.4 deaths per 10,000 cars.”

Mr Gore said it was difficult to pin-point exactly why the toll had fallen during the second half of the year, “but random stopping and the checkpoints certainly caused a ripple in the pool. “The message has gone out to people,” he said. Fine weather had also helped keep the toll down, he said. “Things drivers are doing today and getting away with would be quite a different story if there was a coating of rain on the road,” Mr Gore said.

A total of four road deaths were reported yesterday. The latest deaths occurred just south of Upper Hutt last evening when two men were killed when their car collided with another. The occupants of the second vehicle, a man and a woman, had to be cut from the wreckage by firemen and were taken to Hutt Hospital with serious injuries. The death tally yesterday was the worst so far on any day of the present holiday period, which officially will end at 8 a.m. tomorrow.

The death tally yesterday was the worst so far on any day of the present holiday period, which officially will end at 8 a.m. tomorrow.