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A death after an accident in Christchurch overnight has brought the road toll to nine for the Christmas and New Year period.
Police confirmed that one person was killed in the car accident on Russley Rd around 10:45 p.m. Wednesday. Two other people in the car were injured and taken to Christchurch Hospital.
The official holiday period began at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and runs until 6 a.m. on January 5.
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The crash site in Southland on Monday in which two people were killed.
The number of deaths so far in this holiday period is now more than double the four who died last Christmas and equal to the number of deaths for the entire period in the 2018/19 Christmas-New Year holiday period.
Data from the Ministry of Transport shows that the four deaths in 2019/20 were the lowest during the holiday period since at least 1980. The worst in that period was 1981/82, when 35 people died.
Two people died as a result of crashes Tuesday morning. The first was a two-car collision on Nikau Rd near Pahīatua, north of Masterton, before 5am. The second was later in the morning on Kahikatea Flat Rd in Dairy Flat, north of Auckland.
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One of the two young men who died in a serious accident in West Auckland on December 26 was 20-year-old father and promising rugby player Viliami Muru-Teutau.
On Monday, a man and a woman were killed after a milk tanker and a motorcycle collided on the Riverton-Wallacetown highway at the Oreti River Bridge in Southland. They were Kareen Marie Malcolm and James Lennon Malcolm, both 61, of Invercargill.
Early on Boxing Day, two people were killed when their car hit a bridge on Triangle Rd, Henderson in West Auckland. One has been named Viliami Muru-Teutau, 20 years old.
On Christmas Day, two people were killed on Clevedon-Kawakawa Road in rural South Auckland when the car they were traveling in crashed into a power pole. Police named the couple as Rebecca McAlees, 24, and Terry Charleston, 34.
