Source: Fire and Emergency New Zealand
Firefighters are urging the public to take more care when driving around accident scenes as near misses continue to increase.
This is happening across the country, but particularly in Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s Te Kei region, which encompasses Otago and Southland.
Otago Group Manager Bobby Lamont says that In February, a member of the public drove on the wrong side of the road past firefighters managing traffic at an incident.
“This led to a confrontation where the man attempted the pull a firefighter out of the cab of a fire truck,” Bobby Lamont says.
“In April, a car sped through a traffic incident near Clyde, showing no regard for the safety of emergency service personnel at the scene.
“There have been many other instances in the past few years, including back in June 2023, on State Highway 6 near the intersection of Lake Hayes-Arrowtown Road. A person drove through a motor vehicle crash scene at speed, hitting an accident sign. The sign was flung approximately 10 metres at force and only narrowly avoided hitting a firefighter.
Bobby Lamont says he is worried it is only a matter of time before one of his firefighters is seriously injured.
At the most recent incident in Clyde, he says it was a case of frustrated and impatient drivers ignoring the road accident signs and firefighters asking them to slow down.
“It turned into a very dangerous situation for our people.
“People must be patient when the road is blocked by a crash. We put traffic management in place for the safety of everyone involved, including motorists,” Bobby Lamont says.
“By not following our instruction, people are endangering themselves, other motorists, our people and other emergency services, as well as the people involved in the traffic incident.”
Statistics show that nationally there were 55 health and safety incidents reported through Fire and Emergency’s Safe@Work system in the past two years under the category of ‘motorist behaviours at incident ground’.
However, Bobby Lamont says many of the incidents go unreported.
“Unsafe driver behaviour at incidents is so commonplace now that often our people won’t report the ‘minor’ incidents.
“We tend to get formal reports about the worst incidents, but the feedback from our crews is that they experience some form of unsafe driver behaviour at most incidents.
“We really just want everyone to be safe and need drivers to get on board to help us with that.”
