up on Scenic Drive when I was cycling there the other day. They'd gone straight after a gentle corner, gone off the bank, slammed the side of the Suby stationwagon into a tree, which stoved the side in pretty badly and there it sat. When I got home I rang the Police and council about it. The Police woman asked me if there was anyone still in it! Yek! I had thought about it at the time but the thought of finding someone dead. and hobbling down the bank in my cleated cycling shoes. put me off somewhat. Its the third car I've seen off the road up there in recent years. Being tall and a slow moving (well, going up anyway) cyclist I get to see what a lot of drivers don't.
countrypete,
May 7, 10:54pm
Isn't that called "failing to render assistance"?
wasgonna,
May 7, 11:00pm
More concerned with his cleated cycling shoes.
matarautrader,
May 7, 11:34pm
Wouldn't cleated shoes be better going down a bank than shiney leather flat soled business shoes?
zak410,
May 7, 11:41pm
Are you serious?
sqawks,
May 7, 11:42pm
Reminds me of the car that is (or was) disappearing into the bush off to the side of SH2 near Silverstream in the Hutt Valley. It looked like an MG Midget or something similar and had been there for a very long time when I chanced across it about fifteen years ago only a relatively few meters from the road itself, not visible from the road, but near a walking track.
afer_daily,
May 7, 11:56pm
probably swerving to miss a cyclist taking up all of the road (no names mentioned )
trogedon,
May 8, 12:10am
Ha, ha. That would be win/win then! I think it happened the night before the day after.
trogedon,
May 8, 12:13am
Interesting. If the owner had done it they would've (or been made to) removed it.
johotech,
May 8, 12:22am
That would have been my first question as well.
If a crashed car has been checked by police, they seem to usually put police tape on it so everyone doesn't need to stop and check it.
Hope you are the first passer by if I crash!
tweake,
May 8, 1:46am
i wish they did that more often ! crashed, broken down cars are so common people no longer bother stopping to check. we had one in a paddock, clearly visible from the SH1, probably 10,000 cars go past and no one looked. i think it was there for 3 days before they found the body in the front seat.
sqawks,
May 8, 5:47am
That's what I thought too, but there it was. Utterly intriguing - how did it get there and why was it left there? This is how it looked in 2007, but I first encountered it in 1999 or so.
A few years or ten ago, two-thirds of the way up Mountain Road there was a gap in the railing through which countless cars had been "pushed", down a near-vertical stone bank, through the bush and ending up half-way down the valley. When searching for a stolen Skyline, after a tip-off I roped my way down the bank (no mean feat, this was a LONG way down) to find a veritable Aladdins' Cave of dumped / stolen cars, in desperate shape- some had been there for many years, judging by the look, and the nature of the valley meant they just kept piling one on top of the other. Amongst them was a Seventies Pontiac Firebird, a Commodore or two, Legacy sedan plus end-of-life crap too. But not our Skyline.
Site was cleaned out not too long after that, salvage company used tractors and a bulldozer IIRC to cut a trail UP the stream bed and valley, then pull the cars DOWN to meet them, and load onto a tractor farm trailer. Literally dozens and dozens. "Fresh stock arriving daily".
The road now has a decent guardrail in place, and last time I looked a year or two ago there was no evidence left of where the cars had been.
elect70,
May 8, 7:30pm
The Akatarawa hill road ( nth of upper hutt , was a favourite dumping ground for stolen or abandoned cars . They didnt bother to recover them as down steep bank & 1 lane road . Scroungers would go there on weekends with tools & take parts off , 1 guy i saw had block & tackle hooked over a tree branch & took engine out of a a kingswood
richardmayes,
May 8, 7:43pm
Well if they weren't dead at the time, they probably are by now. ?
trogedon,
May 8, 11:41pm
I was thinking it would be hard to recognise in 07 but obviously you had 8 years pre rust to know.
trogedon,
May 8, 11:41pm
If a 101 year old guy can survive Napal.
trogedon,
May 8, 11:43pm
Scumbags would do that with no thoughts for the owners or the environment. Sad the council had to get them out but glad they did.
brapbrap8,
May 9, 12:12am
I used to live down a gravel road, popular with losers to do skids on. You could always hear when they crashed, lots of revs then suddenly nothing. I should have made money extorting the drunk, stoned kids in exchange for towing them out with the tractor.
zak410,
May 9, 12:48am
What's a Napal?
mainlander05,
May 9, 3:40pm
A friend of na.
trogedon,
May 9, 7:06pm
Got me. That comes with posting and making children's dinner etc.
trogedon,
May 11, 8:29pm
Rode past today and its still there. Anyone want an accident damaged.
richardmayes,
May 13, 2:12am
Occupants must be getting pretty smelly by now?
tintop,
May 13, 2:41am
Oi! A chrome bumper too - just what I need for my rubber to chrome Midget conversion!
Since the public registrations are closed, you must have an invite from a current member to be able to register and post in this thread.
Have an account? Login here.