Barrier review follows Mangere smashes

By Chris Daniels

AUCKLAND - A median crash barrier may soon be installed on a section of Auckland motorway where two men have been killed within the past four months.

The 500m section of Hugh Watt Drive on the Onehunga foreshore - where opposing traffic is separated by a wide strip of grass - is now being investigated by safety officials.

Aucklander Carl Anthony John Irving, aged 32, died on Wednesday after the car he was a passenger in crossed the grass strip near Mangere Bridge and collided with an oncoming light truck. A Sandringham man died in the same spot in December when the car he was driving crossed the grass and smashed into an approaching police car.

In both crashes, the crucial link with Auckland Airport was severed for hours.
The regional traffic operations manager for Transit New Zealand, Derrick Hitchins, says there is now a likelihood a median barrier will be installed on that section of the road.

He says Wednesday's crash will be investigated to see if a barrier could have stopped it.

Previously the grass strip had been considered wide enough for the road not to need a barrier.

A section of the North-western Motorway and large parts of State Highway 1 south of Drury are without median barriers, with opposing traffic separated by a wide grass strip.

Several horrific head-on crashes in the 1980s prompted a big programme of median-barrier construction on the Auckland motorway system.

Research commissioned by Transit NZ shows that accident severity has been reduced by median barriers, with fatal crashes down from 7.2 per cent of all crashes to 2.8 per cent.

If the investigation into the Onehunga foreshore deaths shows that a median barrier is needed there, it does not follow that all other parts of the Auckland motorway system currently without the safety features will get them.

"If there becomes a problem, then that's when we take action," says the national policy services manager for Transit NZ, Ted van Geldermalsen.

The barrier-building programme at the end of the '80s started on the areas of motorway where serious crashes had happened, he says.

It was then expanded, with barriers built on sections where there had been few crashes.

Now the only places without barriers are where the gap between lanes of opposing traffic is thought wide enough to allow motorists time to recover or slow before they hit oncoming traffic.

"We have got a good safety margin with the wide grass strip.

"If there aren't any accidents happening, then we would say that is a low-priority place to spend quite a chunk of money."