DLC So these "professional drivers" stay within the speed limit both on the open road and within built up areas always stop at compulsory stops, keep as far as practicable to the left, dont tailgate,never run red lights and always have secure loads and are couteous and don't intimidate me in my little Toyota etc etc. Yea Right!

Nothing surprises me that stupidity of some of these clowns on the road now days with 500>600+hp that think they are bullet proof. I had done that road for 2.5yrs doing ferry swops & it only got worse as time went on, so i took on a differant run. Some of the units that went up there had left chch real late, yet expected to make the ferry on time with a stop in there blenheim depot as well. No matter what... the distance between picton > chch is still approx 340km & takes the average driver just under the 5 hrs each way comfortably & remaining within the law. But we have drivers that pull fuses / alter speed limiters to gain more speed 110>115km/h & are paid by the trip rate, faster you do it the more $ per hr you are better off. Yet the highway patrol dont seem to catch them at night as very seldom do the tasman police go down towards kaikoura at night & if they do, just about every truck will know thanks to the good old CB radio that (the numerous names they have) are about! May be we need a bit more enforcement on this road by the police than the single cviu officer based in blenheim can give, as kaikoura or cheviot police wont come out at night ethier One thing you cant fool is the engine managment computer, that records a hell of a lot of data that can be used post accident when it has been down loaded to clear or condem a drivers actions. These very same cowboy drivers, seem to love the big noise from the engine / jake brakes when coming into towns let alone in picton when unloaded going down to the fuel stops. I heard a old joke years ago that it was the picton 500 grand prix!! how true it has proved over the past few years

proved again there is no such thing as an accident,,,just bad driving

the rat poison episode at Kaikoura sickened me, just so unneeded, we really need to crack down on certain aspects of our driving culture quite B====Y obvilously!! Marlborough Express story: 28/05/2004. Three years after a rat poison spill into the sea south of Kaikoura, a shellfish ban has finally been lifted. In the early hours of May 23, 2001, a Phoenix Freight truck carrying 18 tonnes of pellets containing the rat poison brodifacoum overturned on State Highway 1 near the Kaikoura road tunnels, spilling its load on to the rocks and into the sea. The pellets had been destined for a Department of Conservation rat eradication programme on Campbell Island. A shellfish-taking ban was quickly put in place by Crown Public Health , now the Community and Public Health division of the Canterbury District Health Board. The ban initially took in a large area, an eight-kilometre exclusion zone stretching up to Kaikoura’s South Bay, which also included no swimming or diving. It was soon established that there wasn’t an issue with brodifacoum in the seawater, so the exclusion zone was lifted. However, the shellfish ban remained as testing continued. By July 2002 the exclusion zone was reduced to the 300 metre area of the bay where the crash happened, and that remained in place until this week. During the past three years CPH health protection officer Geoff O’Brien has been involved with monitoring the area where the spill happened. He said word had been received from the New Zealand Food Safety Authority this week that the ban on shellfish taking could finally be lifted, as the samples taken from paua and mussels now complied with food safety standards. It was surprising it had taken so long for the brodifacoum levels in the shellfish to finally subside, Mr O’Brien said. “We know paua move around and those affected (by the spill) might have moved back into the bay,” he said.

so both of you #1 and #2 believe that all truck drivers are ignorant road hogs or that trucks shouldnt be on the road ? perhaps you have forgotten that while there are some idiots out there the majority of truck drivers are professionals who take great care and pride in the work. to often it is the idiot drivers in cars who seem to have an inbuilt mentality that they must always be in front a of a truck at all costs, they pass on yellow lines, blind corners and regularly fire abuse at truck drivers in their impatience.

I was a truck driver 27 years, i have noticed the stupidity of the Ch-Picton lads over the years become worse and worse to the point that this does not sadly suprise me. They are young inexperienced,stupid naive idiots some of them, with half a brain in charge of $550-000 vehicles that they do not really know how to treat let alone handle, sad reality really as no longer family fleets starting around town in a puddle jumper, no they get straight into a 500 HP 44 tonne unit and they have just reached puberty. Sad reality of the way our econonmy is, most fleets are O/D no longer family companies where the old teach the new. These day the young are mostly know alls who are too ignorant to be taught and sadly like this clown will learn through experience and the dollar cost.

It should of been on rail and this would not of happend

I believe there are railway tracks between Christchurch and Auckland. Instead we end up with two ignorant truck drivers hogging the road. One who crashes and the one required to bring the replacement load. AGAIN!!!