Low road toll for Hawke's Bay in 2021

A clear road on Mahia Peninsula in Northern Hawke's Bay. Photo / Paul Taylor

Hawke's Bay has ended 2021 with one of its lowest road tolls in more than half a century.

According to provisional figures there were 10 fatalities in the Hawke's Bay Today circulation area spanning Wairoa, Hastings, Napier, Central Hawke's Bay and Tararua – less than half the total of 21 recorded in 2020.

The only lower toll on Hawke's Bay Today figures since 1990 was the six in 2013.

The last fatality is in the area is understood to have been seven weeks ago, and none have happened during the 12-day Christmas-New Year Holiday road toll period in which there had by Sunday afternoon been 11 deaths nationwide, equalling the number killed in the holiday period 12 months earlier.

The period opened at 4pm on December 24 and ends at 6am on Wednesday.

The provisional 2021 national road toll was 319, which compared with a record of 843 in 1973, and the lowest toll in the last 50 years – 254 in 2013.

Senior Sergeant Andrew Know, of Hawke's Bay Police, said that by late-afternoon Sunday, 97 collisions from "minor fender-benders to serious" had been reported in the holiday road toll period in the police Eastern District, including six non-fatal in the otherwise most serious category.

In one incident reported early on Sunday afternoon, a 41-year-old man received what were believed to be non-serious injuries in a fall from a motorbike on Taihape Rd in the Waiwhare area, about 40km west of Omahu.