KEY POINTS:
A rail crossing crash that killed two motorists may simply have been a "tragic error" no safety provisions could have prevented, the Transport Safety Minister said yesterday.
"What the hell are we supposed to do if people drive in front of a train?" Harry Duynhoven asked.
The deaths of Brent and Renee Coombes when the freight train hit their car on State Highway 1 south of Taihape on Saturday, leaving their 5-year-old daughter Reef, an orphan, has brought a call for barrier arms to be installed on all level crossings.
Only about 20 per cent of 1400 public road crossings have barriers. Those without include three on State Highway 1, and the NZ Safety Council lobby group says that is not good enough.
But Mr Duynhoven, while expressing sorrow over the weekend deaths, said the crash on the Ohingaiti rail crossing might simply have been the result of a "tragic error" which no degree of effort by Government rail agency Ontrack could have prevented.
Told of concern by Safety Council director Dave Calvert that sun strike might have made flashing red crossing lights invisible to the Coombes, Mr Duynhoven said: "Well, you're not supposed to drive if you can't see where you are going.
"If you've got sun strike they're not going to see barrier arms either."
Mr Duynhoven said that although he was surprised to learn that a crossing on State Highway 1 had no barrier arms, there might be a good reason.
He would ask Ontrack about that, and whether there were other crossings on major highways without adequate bells, lights and barrier arms.
He expressed frustration at criticism of rail safety given the Government was investing "hundreds of millions of dollars" into upgrading a network it had bought back from private owners who stripped it of assets.
Ontrack says lights and bells were working when the Coombes were killed on Saturday morning. The tight S-bend meant barriers would not be installed there.
But it intends raising with Transit NZ the possibility of moving forward the realignment of State Highway 1 across a bridge over the railway.
Although Ontrack says there have been no rail collisions on the crossing for more than 10 years, the police say cars have spun out of control on the bends leading to it.
Senior Constable Les Maddaford, who is investigating the weekend crash, confirmed he was considering sun strike as a possible factor.
He was unclear what speed the Coombes were travelling, but said it was difficult to get around the 90-degree approach to the railway line much above a recommended 25km/h.
Ontrack acting chief executive William Peet said that when the road and rail networks were built, "road played second fiddle to rail".
"The result was some road configurations around level crossings that were far from ideal."
Ontrack spokesman Kevin Ramshaw said the agency received enough money from Land Transport NZ to add barrier arms to no more than about seven crossings a year. They cost about $150,000 a pair.
The two other crossings on SH1 without arms were in Northland.
