Kiwi truck driver on dangerous drivers, worst crashes on New Zealand roads in 40 years

Warning: graphic details

It was a spectacle that stunned motorists traveling north Waikato Highway – an SUV “screaming past” between the left lane and the barbed wire fence, if any Crash and the driver’s inexplicable decision to run into the southbound lanes, where he was struck by another vehicle and died at the scene despite the desperate resuscitation efforts of passersby and first responders.

But the dramatic scenes at Hampton Downs nine days ago did not come as a surprise to everyone. Trucks see it terrible driving every day, and are often the first on the scene to clean up the mess. One tells Cherie Howie: “It never gets better helping emergency services pull bodies from the wreckage.”

It’s the warmth you remember in the weeks, months and even years after pulling a body from a crashed vehicle, says a veteran truck driver.

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.

He has been behind the wheel of trucks and trailers for more than 40 years and says he sees accidents on our roads every few days, including a dozen really serious accidents that have claimed lives.

Sometimes he drives past a previous accident, sometimes he arrives shortly afterwards, and sometimes the horror unfolds right in front of his windshield, requiring him to immediately administer first aid and comfort, or – sometimes – to help first responders remove the dead.

“What you realize when you pull a body out of a car accident is that it is still warm. It’s pretty terrible because the first time you do it, it’s still soggy and warm.

‘Yes, they died. But they are warm when you pull them out and give the paramedics a helping hand. And then sometimes you just put them right on the floor, they don’t even go into a (stretcher) bed or anything.”

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.

Even with care and respect, the dignity of the dead is not guaranteed.

“I’ve seen a lady’s tit fall out of her sweater and I thought, ‘Oh, you poor thing.’ That’s not how things should go for you.”

Emergency services at the scene of last week’s fatal incident on the Waikato Expressway at Hampton Downs.

The North Island-based truck driver contacted the Herald after reading about last week’s tragedy, and with his own message to motorists to be more careful.

The Herald agreed not to name him because he does not have permission from his employer to speak to the media.

The living and the dead

“What I saw,” says the driver, “is out of the gate.”

“We are on the road all our lives. What you see is sometimes downright beautiful and sometimes downright shocking.”

Great moments are when a farmer’s cattle move along the road “and there are no cones, no flashing lights, no bulls*** and everyone just calms down and makes their way through,” he says.

“For me that is patience, where everyone uses common sense. That’s good, Kiwi stuff.

There are ‘nice’ moments of driver behavior, such as around goods movements on the road, but bad behavior far outweighs the good, says the truck driver. Photo / Amos Chapple

Unfortunately, such moments are rare.

More common are dangerous overtaking, cutting off 50-ton trucks and a lot of distractions behind the wheel, ranging from drivers making coffee to putting on make-up.

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.

And the catastrophic aftermath.

“The number of times I’ve had to take evasive action without hurting anyone is astonishing. I hit one. They pulled away from me in a narrow area at 60mph and they were only going 20mph and there was no way I could stop.”

The survival of the two elderly women inside depended on his split-second decision-making, the truck driver says.

“If I had hit them where I was, I would have pushed them into oncoming traffic. But if I had hit them on the right side of the car, they would have been pushed to the left, and I did that. They were shot through a fence.”

The couple was shocked, but alive.

The deadly lie-in

Others are not so lucky, like the delivery driver who was decapitated when the overturned trailer of another truck crashed into his much smaller vehicle.

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.

It was the first fatal accident to which the truck was directly exposed.

“I looked into the cabin and saw that his leg was alone on the passenger seat.

“I knew this guy – we came over in the morning, and I called him on the CB (radio) and asked, ‘How are you?’ And the next day he no longer exists.”

He also knew the other driver, who was so distraught that he asked others for a gun to kill himself, the truck driver says.

“(He would) come around the corner too fast because he was late – he had slept in – and his trailer rolled right into the other guy’s cab.”

He sees an accident on our roads every few days, says the truck driver. Image / Richard Dale

The deadliest crash he has ever seen had an element of bad luck, with one vehicle hitting another in black ice between Taupō and Rotorua. But while the two seat belted women in one car survived, only one of the untied quartet in the other car also survived. .

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.

“All I see in front of me are two cars pulling away from each other in reverse and shooting. By the time you get there, things are still falling from the sky.

“I immediately saw that there were three dead… when I felt their heads, they were soft in the front and back.”

Overtaking, cutting, distraction

That incident was more than twenty years ago, but our driving behavior has deteriorated since then, the truck driver says.

Every day, other drivers change lanes too close to his truck when they should be leaving a gap of six to seven car lengths, while others juggle putting on makeup or making coffee while driving through heavy traffic.

“You see them trying to pour hot water into a mug while they are in three lanes of traffic… and still going about 9mph.”

Dangerous overtaking, even on blind bends, is another common phenomenon, he says.

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.

“I can’t figure out the mentality. What the hell are you doing? Do you know that you could have very easily committed suicide? But it’s hard to tell people that because some people think they’re bulletproof.

“They probably didn’t see what I saw.”

The married father and grandfather just want everyone to get home safely, and without the trauma he and other truck drivers have to deal with.

Witnesses to last week’s tragedy now share that burden, he says.

‘No one wants to see anyone die. When you see the bad one, you think about it for a week, and then it slowly disappears.

“But it never completely leaves you.”

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.

Cherie Howie is an Auckland reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than twenty years and specializes in general news and articles.