Antony Alexander was an Air Force Police NCO, NZ Police dispatcher, and qualified in crash analysis in 1997 with the NZ Police. He is now driving trucks as a passion.

Back in November of 2018, I wrote an opinion piece for Stuff.co.nz in which I made the comment, as truck drivers, one of the biggest fears most of us have is coming around the corner and being faced with something we can‘t avoid. Or coming across a crash where there is nothing we can do. For three or four of us who travel the Napier-Taupo leg of SH5 regularly, that fear came to fruition earlier this year just north of Te Haroto. I‘m not going to go into details, as later I found the two degrees of separation in New Zealand was certainly true that night. Two of the students my wife looks after in her student representative role were related to the dead driver of the accident we happened upon. What made it sad for me that night was the fact the person trying to help the deceased driver thought that she was still alive. With my experience in a previous career path where I attended hundreds of fatals, I just knew that wasn‘t going to be an option. You just don‘t survive an impact like the one that had happened. And then, within 24 hours, a second crash happened at exactly the same spot, thankfully not resulting in a death. There would have been many people affected by the fatal crash we were present at. The family of the deceased first and foremost, the people in the other car, the bystanders, the first responders, and me. The official crash report hasn‘t come out and probably won‘t for quite some time. I‘m pretty sure that I know what one of the factors in the crash will be, and that is the surface of the road. For the past year or so I have spent time talking to NZTA, roading contractors, and other professional drivers regarding the state of the road In places it is absolute garbage. Patches upon patches, undulating surfaces, low-grade chip seal that has been worn away to a slippery bare surface which gives absolutely no grip for a car – let alone a truck – if something goes wrong. NZTA seems to be aware of these areas though, as the number of temporary ‘slippery when wet‘ signs that have appeared over the past six months is phenomenal. Coincidentally, four days before the latest fatal near Te Pohue, a van had slid off the road at pretty much the exact same spot, and the signs went up not long after. About 15 minutes before the crash, I had travelled through the area and had thought at the time that there was going to be a crash. Little did I know.

As professionals travelling this road regularly, we know these spots but we sit back and wonder how some people make it home at night with the way they drive. The night before the fatal, I watched someone overtake me on a blind corner, in the wet. I even activated my camera, sure that I was going to watch them head off into the bushes. They didn‘t. How they didn‘t was pure luck I guess. And what was the point? About two kilometres up the road were passing lanes. Instead, he or she made a decision that would have affected many lives if it had all gone wrong. I‘ve been trying to get someone from the local NZTA office to come for a ride for more than a year. One of the systems managers said that he would, but to date it still hasn‘t happened. In June 2019 one of the network managers from one of the two contractors that work on the road took the time. To his credit, a couple of places that were pointed out were either resealed or ‘scrubbed‘ to make the road less slippery. In my opinion, this is just a way to save money, pure and simple. The corner where the fatal happened in March was pointed out to the contractor as “being lethal in the wet”. Those were my exact words. Prophetic words, which absolutely guts me. Other than some scrubbing, the surface hasn‘t changed since that night in June 2019. It‘s still lethal. There has been some work carried out on the Napier-Taupo but a lot of it is again, in my opinion, substandard. Especially the Taupo end, which has a multitude of patches, yet they‘re not flush with the rest of the pavement and therefore cause the road to be uneven and bumpy and dangerous in some spots. We should all know that having a bump on a corner shifts the centre of gravity of the vehicle as it travels, which in turn can cause the vehicle to become unstable. Why don‘t the contractors know this? Surely if they did, they wouldn‘t do it. It really is basic physics.

So, is it the contractors? Is it the NZTA not funding them enough, resulting in corners being cut? Is it that NZTA has set road building standards well below what they used to be? Is it the quality of the materials? The quality of the actual work? Or is it the basic reality that people make mistakes? In March 2020, NZTA announced that $13 million was going to be spent upgrading the Taupo arterial route between the SH5 Napier-Taupo Road intersection with SH1, through to Wairakei. They stated that this was to make the road safer, as three people had died and six were seriously injured between 2010 when the road was built and September 2017. The work will include widening the road shoulders to give drivers more room to recover if they lose control, installing flexible safety barriers down the middle of the road to prevent head-on crashes, and roadside safety barriers where hazards can‘t be removed, such as power poles, trees, and deep ditches. As far as I can see, the one thing that is needed on this piece of road at this point in time is repair of the potholes, and pieces of tarmac breaking up. A representative on the NZTA site in regards to the upgrade states: “These improvements will make the road more forgiving of human error, helping prevent crashes and making them more survivable if they do happen.” Let us put the NZTA‘s reasoning for work on this stretch of SH1 into perspective. Over the horror Christmas period of 2019, two were killed and eight seriously injured on the Napier-Taupo Road. In the past six months, three died and countless were injured. That is a six-month period for one road, not 10 years. Yet the road works being completed are minimal, and there are no capital works planned for the road for the next seven to 10 years. No improvements, no substantial rebuilds, no safety implementations.

With every serious crash being put at a cost of about $3.5 million in general terms, more than $20 million could have been spent on the Napier-Taupo Road to help prevent crashes and make the road more forgiving of human error. Let‘s face it, people do make mistakes. At the moment there are multiple spots on this road that do not offer protection from that. Local government representatives have also requested the central government have more policing on the road but the staff numbers just aren‘t available. Contrary to popular belief, a general duties police officer does not concentrate on road safety as they are simply too busy. The Commercial Vehicle Safety Team also don‘t patrol the roads as much as they used to, but concentrate on the CVST centres, doing spot compliance checks. NZTA seems to adopt the line that it has spent money on barriers to make places like the Hawke‘s Bay Expressway safer. I do agree the barriers have reduced the number of head-on crashes, but there doesn‘t seem to be any forethought going into where safety improvements are actually needed, on the other lower profile roads. Over the next couple of months I intend to explore areas on the Napier-Taupo Road and campaign to make them safer for every one of the 5000 motorists per day who travel the road. This includes the multitude of professional drivers who are often the first ones that come across a serious crash. I still am scared that I may be the next one who is hit, regardless whether it is a mistake or the road itself that is the cause.

More Industry Comment

https://www.nztrucking.co.nz/industry-comment-no-gain-without-pain