According to Senior Sergeant Mark Holmes, acting head of Western Bay of Plenty road policing, many of the crashes were caused by driver inattention.
We had heavy overnight rain after a sustained period of dry weather and that had obviously made the roads slippery. I say "obviously" because as a motorist who does many hundreds of kilometres a year, rain on a dry surface can make the road quite treacherous in places and a little more care and attention is needed.
A very good motoring journalist friend of mine and myself have interesting discussions when we are together about New Zealand drivers and our roads and one of the topics we often touch on, and get a bit of a laugh about, is the number of times you read or hear a headline in the paper or on the radio that a dangerous road was to blame for a crash.
We both agree that there is no such thing as a dangerous road. So stop blaming the road. It is the old story of driving to the conditions.
Senior Sergeant Mark Holmes alluded to concentration. When we are driving a vehicle, whether it's a bike, car, truck or bus it can become a lethal weapon.
When you are handling a lethal weapon you need to concentrate and take a lot of care.
The obvious thing in driving is keeping a safe distance behind another vehicle and of course speed. If it's wet. slow down.
Thankfully most of the people involved in the Tuesday incidents were wearing seat belts and no one required a trip to hospital.
The most important part of a vehicle is the nut behind the wheel!
Staying with our roads, the Minister of Transport Steven Joyce was in town recently to launch the new Tauranga Eastern Link, which will become the Bay of Plenty's largest roading project and a key strategic transport corridor for the region.
The project will deliver many benefits to our region including safer and easier travel, reducing travel times between Tauranga and Paengaroa, which in turn will benefit business in the Bay.
The project is expected to take five or six years to complete and all going well will be open to traffic in 2016.
It will complete an amazing roading infrastructure within the Tauranga/Mount area. It started with Route P and the Tauranga Harbour bridge quite a few years ago and has since been expanded to include a new bridge across the harbour, although for the life of me I can't figure why the original bridge when it was constructed wasn't made four lanes.
Think of the money we would have saved.
There is one glaring error in the Route K highway.
Now, I am no roading engineer, not even close to it, but why there isn't an entry to the toll road from 15th or 17th Avenue has got me beat.
If you live anywhere from 12th Avenue south your only entry point if you want to use the toll road is to travel to Elizabeth St.
It must be frustrating for our ambulance service, which is based in 17th Avenue.
If they receive an emergency call for an accident on the Kaimais, they have to travel down Cameron Rd and through the busy Greerton shopping centre or negotiate the traffic north on Cameron Rd to Elizabeth St.
As I said I am no expert, and you can tell me to stick to my day job if you like, but an entry point at the bottom of 17th Avenue on to the toll road seems glaringly obvious and would save a lot of time perhaps even a life.
As well it would certainly take a lot of pressure off Cameron Rd through Gate Pa and Greerton. I certainly think it's worth visiting a mid Avenues entry to the toll road.
