Tourist takes out Landie

We drive on the left over here in NZ. We get a lot of tourists coming here and pick up hire cars and campervans but just can not adjust to driving on our side of the road. The result is horrible head-on accidents. One this weekend took out a 110 over on the West Coast here in the South Island....

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/ne...es-centre-line-crashes-into-car-on-West-Coast

There are accidents involving European (as in this case), American drivers etc, but the worse drivers by far are Asian drivers. Most really do not have a clue how to drive on either side of the road. We don't have motorways here or dual carriage ways. The main roads are 99% single lane (each way) with occasional areas on our main SH1 where it opens into 2 lane passing areas - no barriers though. Accidents are usually head-on and very messy.

The Landie driver in this accident had obviously done a good job of securing his boat on the trailer.

Oh no, that poor 110! Nice pool of blood too

It would be interesting to know which driver was critical and which stable. The 110 looks to have faired better, but it's the shock wave without crumple zones that's the worry. If that is a pool of blood, it seems to be below the drivers side of the hire van. Bad news for both of them, either way, but it would be interesting to know.

From this camper forum...

http://www.nzmotorhome.co.nz/NZMotorhomeForum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12599

"Sickening feeling when one minute before this happened in the Buller Gorge today, we had pulled over to let the Landrover towing a boat pass us, around the next corner and this happened ten seconds ahead of us. The German tourist driving the rental Campervan had travelled some distance on the wrong side of the road after going through road works.

The accident occurred at 11am, no phone coverage, both drivers seriously injured, such a tragedy. It took over three hours to stabilise the Campervan driver and cut him from the vehicle. The serious accident investigating team came by road from Blenheim. The road was reopened to large vehicles (us included) around 3.40pm.

This is happening too often, so sad, so many lives affected needlessly."

Wow! Surely the campervan would have had air bags, belt tensioners and crumple zones and the 110 just the two hefty chassis rails. That's a surprising result. I hope they are both ok and make a full recovery.

The campervan may have had those things - but they're the type of van where driver sits over the front wheels and engine and there's next to nothing to crumple in front of him. Plus of course - what ever crumple zone there was - was also the crumple zone for a heavy rigid Land Rover and big boat!

I did a Google to see if I could find any later info on the fate of the people involved - I googled "Buller Gorge accident" - but there's been so many serious accidents through there it was wood for trees to find hits for this crash! There was even a crash where a Copper did a U Turn to take off after a speeding bike and took 2 other bikes out!

I had thought of the lack of distance from the driver to the front of that campervan. It's scary short. I hadn't thought of the crumple zone being shared by the 110! That's a great point.
Thanks for looking for further info. I would think that most of the Series, 90 and Defender drivers on here would be interested.

Taken from https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/NZLANDROVEROwners/info

"Gee, have been flying under the radar over the long weekend without internet or cell coverage ………
I know the owner/driver well and had helped supply some bits to this 200tdi Defender.
Not sure if he was part of this forum, but he was on other forums that I belong to.
Chris is in hospital in Chch having gone under operations for facial reconstruction with steel plates and screws.
Also missing a couple of teeth.
He was in the process of moving to West coast for work and would have been travelling down when accident happened"

...

"Further to this assistance is required re the vehicle.
Please see above link and if you can help it would be appreciated."

eek that looks bad, hope he recovers, I know what you mean about Asian drivers, there were a couple of Chinese women on the m25 in the fast lane doing less than 50 wondering why people were honking at them

guess that's the slow lane back home