Dad and son pull man out of car on fire

A father has told how he and his son dragged an alleged drunk driver out of a burning car moments after his own car was hit.

Daryl Hone and his son Andre, 23, from Te Puna, were travelling towards Otumoetai in the early hours of Saturday when a car turned into them.

"I wasn't very happy, as you can imagine," Mr Hone said. "That put my son's life and my own at stake."

"He [Andre] said, 'Dad, the other car's on fire and it's starting to burn'.

"We could see it burning straight away, there was a flame in the bonnet."

Mr Hone is a trained pilot and his son an aircraft engineer and both were well trained to cope with the situation.

They went to the driver's door and told the man to get out of his car.

He refused and became aggressive.

"His airbag had gone off. Whether he was dazed or not, I don't know, because he had cuts on his face," Mr Hone said. "He basically just sat there and looked into thin air."

The driver eventually got out of the car but made a second attempt to return to it before the situation took a turn for the worse.

"His car exploded two or three times. [The fire] burned his interior out," Mr Hone said.

The father and son and bystanders emptied a fire extinguisher on to the blaze but with little success.

Mr Hone said he was shocked at the behaviour of other drivers at the scene.

"People were just driving down the hill and driving around it," he said.

Police and firefighters attended the scene. The man was allegedly twice over the adult breath alcohol limit.

A 40-year-old Tauranga man is to appear in the Tauranga District Court on Friday charged with drink-driving and careless driving.

- APN