Two men were injured when they were thrown into the sea after their motor launch collided with the Waiheke Island ferry last night.

All five people in the car had been drinking and the driver said she lost control after being distracted by a passenger.

Days after her partner died in last Saturday's tragedy, Dido Eden found a poem from him asking her to marry him.

Annika Kirsten, 23, was one of nine people to die in the skydiving plane crash at Fox Glacier on September 4.

The driver of a car involved in a triple fatality on Tuesday night had been stopped earlier in the day for speeding and carrying unauthorised passengers, police say.

He was a little adventurer who would "body-slam" his mother to wake her up but he was too young to know the danger of playing in driveways.

Christchurch residents thought another earthquake had struck when a bus and rubbish truck collided in Burwood earlier today. Photo / Geoff Sloan

Three Gisborne teenagers died after a two-vehicle smash on one of the country's worst accident blackspots last night.

Police are investigating whether alcohol played a part in last night's two-vehicle crash on one of NZ's most notorious stretches of highway.

An Australian skydiving instructor with a fear of flying was one of those killed in one of NZ's worst aviation disasters in 17 years.

Three people are dead following a collision between a car and a ute in the Waikato tonight.

Police say the child, thought to be aged about two years, was hit by a vehicle in Otara at about 1.20pm.

A father accused of killing his son, after allegedly driving his car into the path of a train, displayed appalling driving before the "entirely preventable" incident, a jury was told today.