Seven of the 51 fatal car accidents in Waikato last year happened on Waipā roads, a report to Waikato Regional Council’s Transport committee has revealed this week.
Of the eight people who died, seven were male drivers aged between 24 and 79 and one was a female passenger aged 54.
Three crashes were in Te Awamutu and the others were in Ōhaupō, Karāpiro, Pirongia and Rukuhia.
Two fatal crashes in the Waikato district and one in Hamilton were close to the Waipā boundary.
Those who died were a 67-year-old male driver in Tamahere, a 34-year-old male driver in Newstead and a 70-year-old female driver in Rukuhia.
There has already been another fatality this year – at Parawera where a car driven by a 52-year-old male hit a power pole on Arapuni Road.
New Zealand’s death toll last year was 320 with Waikato accounting for 16 per cent of those putting the region in second place behind Auckland.
Transport Policy and Programmes team leader Nigel King, the author of the report, told the council while the number of Waikato accidents was down on previous years, the region was still over-represented in national road safety statistics.
The numbers may be higher because the council relies on receiving incident reports. There may be a delay because some investigations were still active, he said.
