Mother questions why SH1 at Oakleigh, south of Whangārei, remains deadly

Wednesday, 24 July 2019

State Highway 1 at Oakleigh, south of Whangārei, is a notorious and deadly stretch of road.

A mother whose daughter died on Northland's deadly stretch of State Highway 1 is questioning why the road has not been made safer.

Sarah Jayne Galloway was just 20 when she died at the notorious blackspot of Oakleigh, south of Whangārei, in 2006.

She was the 13th fatality on the 8.5km stretch of road within seven years.

Heather Galloway still wonders what happened when her daughter Sarah, pictured, fatally crashed at Oakleigh, SH1.

But since then, there have been a further 11 fatalities in the same place, including two within the last two months.

* Northland needs road investment, not speed reduction to fix poor crash rate

* Northland motorists lament lack of State Highway 1 progress in 'forgotten north'

* Northland's drivers to blame for deadly crashes, police say**

NZ Transport Agency figures show 24 people have died since 1999 and 50 have been seriously injured on SH1 at Oakleigh, between the intersection with Salmon Rd and the intersection with Oakleigh Rise.

The figures may not take into account all of the crashes in 2018 and 2019, so could increase even if there are no more crashes this year.

Sarah Galloway - who loved music, reading and travel - was just 20 when she died in a head-on crash at Oakleigh in July 2006.

Sarah's mother, Heather Galloway, questions why the notorious road has still not been improved.

A lowered speed limit - as proposed for other parts of Northland - plus more definition between oncoming lanes would help, Galloway said.

'I don't want to see any more young ones lose their lives,' she said.

'It's the families that suffer afterwards.'

What exactly happened during Sarah's fatal crash was still unclear.

Galloway said Sarah was returning home to Haruru Falls after a friend's 18th birthday in Auckland.

But, perhaps unlike many that age, the friends were not into partying and had gone to bed early the night before.

An image from the police file on Sarah Galloway's fatal crash shows her car was crushed with the head-on impact.

However, when Sarah got to Oakleigh, her car failed to take a slight left-hand bend, and she crashed head-on into a four-wheel-drive driven by a foreign driver.

'There was no way she could survive the accident, her being in a little car and him being in a Bighorn,' Galloway said.

Police believed Sarah had fallen asleep at the wheel because her heater was on high.

NZ Transport Agency says all of SH1 from Whangārei to Wellsford will get safety upgrades.

But Galloway disputed that, saying Sarah's heater did not work and she had recently rested at Wellsford.

She believed Sarah tried to take evasive action on the road, despite no skid marks being found.

Whatever happened in Sarah's crash, the lack of safety barriers and north-south separation on the road likely had an impact.

Police said SH1 south of Whangārei was the highest-risk area for crashes in Northland.

Northland Regional Transport Committee chairman John Bain said the road needed to be upgraded to a four-lane highway - a project which was deferred in October in favour of extensive safety upgrades.

NZ Transport Agency's senior manager system design, Kevin Reid, said a new intersection speed zone at Mangapai Road had been installed, automatically reducing the speed to 60kmh when vehicles turned in or out of the road.

The entire road from Wellsford to Whangārei would get safety upgrades, starting with the stretch south of Whangārei.

The improvement included rumble strips, widened centrelines, flexible centre median barriers and additional edge barriers, Reid said.

'These safety interventions will significantly reduce the number and severity of crashes on this high-volume section of SH1,' he said.

But Reid said the speed on this this section of road was unlikely to be dropped anytime soon, with other roads being a higher priority for speed reviews.