{"id":173220,"date":"2025-12-08T06:13:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T06:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/173220\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T06:13:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T06:13:12","slug":"moment-of-recklessness-phone-use-blamed-for-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/173220\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Moment of recklessness&#8217;: Phone use blamed for crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Police say an alleged &#8220;moment of recklessness&#8221; could have caused deaths, after a driver crashed while using a cell phone on Sunday afternoon in Hampden.<\/p>\n<p>District Road Policing Manager, Inspector Sarah Thorn, said the driver of one vehicle admitted to police they were distracted by changing music on their phone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They drifted completely onto the other side of the road in a 100kph area, colliding with an oncoming car,&#8221; Insp Thorn said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Two people were taken to hospital with moderate injuries and given the circumstances, their conditions could have been significantly worse.<\/p>\n<p>Police are continuing to investigate the crash, but charges are likely.<\/p>\n<p>State Highway 1 was closed for hours while emergency services worked at the scene, and Police thanked the public for their patience.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Roads all over Aotearoa are only going to get busier as we get closer to Christmas and the summer holidays,&#8221; Insp Thorn said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s extremely important we all drive safely to reduce the risk of hurting anyone on the roads.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police say an alleged &#8220;moment of recklessness&#8221; could have caused deaths, after a driver crashed while using a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-173220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}