A dad who blamed himself for the tragic death of his toddler son has a message of hope for the family whose baby died.

A mini-van with six tourists has crashed and a person is dead in North Canterbury.

A 62-year-old man has died in a single vehicle crash in Southland last night.

The firefighting pilot who escaped a helicopter crash unscathed says he's happy nobody was hurt and doesn't think mechanical failure or pilot error caused the crash.

Residents in Auckland's Herne Bay found a crashed driver "spread-eagled" over a steep slope about 10m below an entrance to the Harbour Bridge around 2am yesterday.

About nine people each day receive head injuries from falls in their home, according to ACC claim data.

The co-pilot of the crashed TransAsia Airways plane was a New Zealand citizen who learned to fly in Auckland.

The captain of TransAsia Flight GE235 complained of "engine abnormalities" but was rebuffed when he asked for an urgent inspection of the plane shortly before its final take-off.

A young child who died in a crash in the western Bay of Plenty this weekend has been named by police.

A woman died from hypothermia after falling from a cliff and landing on rocks, the coroner has found.

One person was critically injured when a car and a roadworks truck collided on a motorway last night.

One person was critically injured when a car hit a road works truck on the Southern Motorway in Auckland tonight.

An unseen oil spill may have played a part in a crash in which a young child died after a car veered into a power pole and smashed into a paddock.

A fuel tanker carrying 13,000 litres of diesel has rolled, trapping a driver this morning and causing fuel to leak.

A person was killed late last night in a suspected hit-and-run incident in Welcome Bay Rd, Tauranga.

Four people have died in separate crashes around New Zealand, in a ghastly weekend on the nation's roads.

A man is making a remarkable recovery after undergoing surgery to remove bone fragments from his brain - but only a centimetre or so could have made the injury much worse.

The man who died when he stepped in to the path of a truck on State Highway 2 at Te Puna yesterday has been named.

A 24-year-old man killed by a train at an Auckland station was texting friends minutes before he died just metres from his apartment.

A man suffered serious burns to most of his body after the boat he was in burst into flames while he was filling the tank with petrol.

Police have named the man who died in a crash on SH3 near Bulls this morning. He was Shane Edgecombe, 20, of Wanganui.

A pedestrian has died near Tauranga, one man was found dead in his car near Palmerston North and four people were injured in a head-on collision in south Waikato.

A young Briton is in a Christchurch spinal unit after breaking his back in a Queenstown tree climbing fall.

A dad and three children escaped uninjured when their car burst into flames in Queenstown.

A man is trapped in a car and critically injured after a truck and car collided on State Highway 1 south of Whangarei.

A teenage farmhand became an accidental hero after keeping a potentially disastrous scrub fire at bay.

An 85-year-old pensioner who fell 30m from his clifftop property on to rocks had to wriggle out of his pants to reach his cellphone to raise the alarm.

Police say a motorcyclist likely died on impact when he slid into the path of an oncoming van on State Highway 50 yesterday.