Te Puke crash: Resident describes crash on No 1 Rd in Bay of Plenty

The car ended up at the bottom of a bank in a paddock.

The screech of tyres in the early hours of last Wednesday morning jolted No 1 Rd resident Walter Hutchins awake just in time to hear a loud bang.

''I just thought 'what kind of a mess is this going to be?','' he said.

He got to the roadside about the same time as a neighbour.

''I thought it was further down the road towards Trevelyan's as I thought that's where I'd heard the noise, but I shone a torch down there and couldn't see anything.

The gap between the concrete power pole and fence post the car went through.

''Then the neighbour said to me 'isn't there supposed to be a fence there?' and I looked back and there was a big hole there.''

The car had skidded across the berm in front of his house, taken out his mailbox and gone through the fence, plunging into the paddock below.

''[It went] straight between the concrete power pole and our fence post - there's probably about 8 or 9 feet between the two - and it was just luck otherwise the passenger side would have gone straight into the concrete post.

''When I realised a car had gone over the bank I said 'this is going to be bad'.''

While he was on the phone to the emergency services, he spotted two figures come climbing up the bank.

They waited until the police arrived and were interviewed, said Walter.

''It was a bit of a shock at that sort of hour - it was just lucky they weren't killed.''

Walter said there was a general problem with traffic speeding on the section of No 1 Rd.

''My boy's 13 now, but when he was younger I was always worried about him crossing the road there. And we've lost a dog there too.''

He said he would like to see better signage and a warning specifically for the bend in the road close to his property.

Senior Sergeant in charge of Western Bay Road policing said the incident was treated as a minor crash with no injuries.

''We don't yet know why they went off the road.''

He said from a police point of view there isn't a particular issue with speed on the stretch of road.

Police were called to the crash at 2.40am last Wednesday.

The speed limit on the section of road was reduced to 50km/h in March 2021.

In June 2019 two kiwifruit workers were killed when the car they and two others were in left a nearby section of No 1 Rd and hit a garage and in 2017 a people mover left the road close to the Hutchins' property.