KEY POINTS:
The Christmas holiday road toll remained at eight this morning, with one week of the official holiday period still to go.
Police reported there had been no more fatal crashes since yesterday morning when a 43-year-old man was killed after he lost control of his stationwagon at Kumeu, northwest of Auckland.
He died at the scene and his name has not yet been released.
The official Christmas-New Year holiday road toll period runs from 4pm on Christmas Eve until 6am on January 5.
Last year's toll was 18 dead and 65 seriously injured from 16 crashes.
On Saturday three people were killed when two motorcycles collided head on south of Christchurch.
Husband and wife Martyn, 48, and Kaye Hartley, 35, and Nigel Hannington, 44, all from Christchurch, were killed in the accident and another female passenger was in a critical condition.
About the same time, Hicks Bay volunteer firefighter Ray Barrett, 62, was killed when the fire appliance he was on board crashed and rolled down a bank while travelling to an accident in northern East Cape.
Boxing Day recorded no road fatalities.
Early on Christmas Day, David James Hill, 23, died when the car in which he was a passenger crashed into a bank north of Morrinsville.
Initial indications were that speed and alcohol were factors in the crash, police said.
Later on Christmas Day 86-year-old James Philip Vesey died while on his way to deliver presents to members of his family.
Mr Vesey failed to give way at an intersection and pulled into the path of a southbound car at Gordonton, northeast of Hamilton, police said.
The first road death of the season was 17-year-old Holley Janelle Geck, of Pukekohe, south of Auckland.
Ms Geck was killed on Christmas Eve when her car flipped and ended up in a ditch, just a few hundred metres from her home.
The accident happened at 8pm - just four hours into the official holiday period.
The death of seven-year-old boy, crushed when a 4WD rolled on a Northland farm on Saturday, does not count toward the holiday road toll as it did not happen on a public road.
- NZPA
