Trauma doctor wants barrier on unforgiving road

Don Shanks, chief of the Mangatangi Volunteer Fire Brigade, with the crosses representing fatalities on the killer stretch of road in the past 25 years. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

A top Auckland doctor has called for a median barrier to be placed along a deadly stretch of State Highway 2.

Dr David Adams, director of trauma at Middlemore Hospital, spoke to about 200 people at Maramarua Hall last night.

A few moments of silence were held for the victims of crashes on the 35km stretch of road between the Pokeno turnoff on State Highway 1 and the turnoff to State Highway 27 at Mangatarata.

Forty people have been killed on the road in the past five years, the latest a motorcyclist who died on Friday when his bike and a truck collided at Mangatawhiri.

Dr Adams said the hospital was seeing about one major trauma case requiring medical or surgical treatment a day,  many from the dangerous stretch of highway.

Pressure has mounted on Transit to make the road safer since it put out a draft 10-year plan in January that showed a bypass at Mangatawhiri had been approved but a diversion with more lanes at Maramarua was still a decade away.

Hundreds of submissions from the public have called on the roading authority to speed up its plans.

Transit has made $2.7 million available for immediate changes, including a billboard campaign, removing power poles and trees from the road edge, and putting audible markers on the road.

It said it would also consider lowering the speed limit - a move police have supported.

But Port Waikato MP Paul Hutchison, who called last night's meeting, wants the Government to commit to a four-lane expressway between Pokeno and Mangatarata within 10 years. He is urging support for a petition to that effect.

Dr Adams backed the four-lane expressway idea. "State Highway 2 needs a median barrier."

He said the horrific injuries received in head-on crashes on Auckland's motorways in the 1980s were no longer seen.

The petition is being circulated by local firefighters, who have been frustrated in efforts to raise awareness of the highway's danger.

Last month, Transit refused to allow the Mangatangi Volunteer Fire Brigade to put up 85 white crosses, each representing someone killed on the notorious stretch in the past 25 years, on the roadside.

Transit said the crosses could distract drivers and endanger those putting them up and maintaining them. Firefighters compromised by putting the crosses in a paddock.

Late last year, Transit applied for funding for the $43 million, 7.2km bypass at Mangatawhiri. It is expected to be built by 2008.

State Highway 2

* 35 deadly kilometres between Pokeno and Mangatarata.

* 40 deaths in the past five years, 85 since 1980.