Subscribe to RSSPolice Had Stopped Crash Car Earlier
It’s now been revealed that the driver of a car involved in a triple fatality crash on SH2 at Maramarua on Tuesday night had been stopped by police earlier in the day for speeding and carrying unauthorised passengers.
Three teenagers, driver Mary Jane Jo Vanna Kingi- Te Purei and passengers Tiata Te Arohanui Maxwell and Te Maungarongo Te Kuiri Kingi all aged 18 and from Gisborne died at the scene of the crash following a collision with a utility about 8.10pm.
Western Waikato Area Commander, Inspector Paul Carpenter, said the trio’s car had been stopped for traveling at 130km/h on SH2 at Matawai, west of Gisborne earlier in the day.
“A traffic infringement notice was recovered in the car that also shows the driver was in breach of her graduated drivers licence, carrying unauthorised passengers.
“Under current legislation Police can only issue an infringement notice, not seize the vehicle, tragically the trio’s trip to South Auckland came to an abrupt end in the Waikato on Tuesday night.”
SH2 was closed for about two hours today to allow crash investigators to carry out a scene examination.
Over the past five years eight people have died in five crashes on the Waikato stretch of SH2 around where Tuesday night’s crash occurred.
Mr Carpenter said analysis of crash investigation reports showed only one of those crashes involved environmental conditions being partial factors in a crash.
Police are awaiting the results of toxicology reports to determine what, if any, part alcohol played in the crash and a vehicle inspector’s report on the serviceability of the tires fitted to the car and if their condition could have played a factor in what occurred.
The deaths have been reported to the Coroner.
“At this point all Police can do is warn of the dangers the combination of long trips and driver inexperience pose, drivers licences are graduated to allow young drivers to learn and gain experience instead of hitting the nation’s highways cold.
“Regretfully it appears these young people never had the opportunity to gradually gain that experience and three families are left to pick up the pieces from this tragic event.”
4 Comments
What annoys me is that the Holiday Highway goes ahead with a really bad BCR whilst SH2 at Maramarua gets delayed.
Joyce and the NZTA officials who decided that the Holiday Highway was more important should be charged with murder!
“tragically the trio’s trip to South Auckland came to an abrupt end in the Waikato on Tuesday night”
Call me an asshole, or in a really bad mood - but I fail to see the tragedy. If somone uninvolved had died, yes. But all here seems to point at some fools compounding their own wilful mistakes.
Um, Karl
I think any road fatality’s are tragic, a triple fatality even more so.
What about the driver in the white ute? Just because he is likely to live does not mean he will not be traumatized by the event.
The driver is responsible for the vehicle. She was breaching (alleged) license conditions, (allegedly) failed to keep left, and operated a vechle that may not have been roadworthy. The passengers are also innocent victims here. It is not really fair to have expected them to have inspected the tires (if you didn’t have a license would you know what unsafe tires looked like?), or the license of the driver.
Theirs no way we should be as a society accepting road fatalities as being unavoidable.
Scott, points taken - no, I don’t think we should be accepting of fatalities at all. But fixing roads like Chris R says goes only half the way - fixing the tendency of our younger drivers to consider the road their playground (often with aclohol and speed involved) is as important.
If we had a societal clampdown on excessive youth driving behaviours, we would not prevent such cases - but we would reduce them a lot in number, because while the real assholes will always break the rules, a lot of fence sitters only break them when “everyone” breaks them.
And I just think it LOOKS very much here like the three girls were at fault, and thus, “tragic” smacks a bit of “Oh, those poor innocents, they knew not what they were doing”. Which I disagree with.