A horror crash north of Tauranga which killed three people was "like a war zone", police say.

The father of a man killed in a collision has told his son's friends to remember him when they get into a car.

A man with serious leg injuries has been cut from a van in a crash causing long delays on the Southern Motorway in Auckland.

Police are disgusted after a crashed driver stole a car belonging to an elderly couple who had stopped to help him.

"Three cars and a truck and trailer piled up. It was spectacular and my mate was smack bang in the middle of it."

A Wellington coroner has recommended a local church overhaul its carpark layout after a second child was killed in the L-shaped lot.

The truck driver killed in a head-on collision in the Bay of Plenty this week has been described as "the rock everybody looked to".

An 8-year-old girl lost her mother and was seriously injured when a freight train hit the family's ute, flinging it 20 metres.