{"id":311969,"date":"2026-03-04T03:55:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T03:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/311969\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T03:55:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T03:55:14","slug":"red-light-runners-lunch-dash-ends-in-cop-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/311969\/","title":{"rendered":"Red light runner’s lunch dash ends in cop crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

A hungry driver ran a red light and crashed into an unmarked police car in his bid to get home for lunch.<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old man admitted to officers that he \u2018\u2018wasn\u2019t concentrating\u2019\u2019 when he ran the red light and caused the crash yesterday, Sergeant Matt Lee, of Dunedin, said.<\/p>\n

Emergency services were called to the crash at the intersection of Queens Gardens and Crawford St at about 12pm.<\/p>\n

An unmarked police vehicle was travelling north through the intersection on a green light when the crash happened.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The aftermath of the collision nears Queens Garden yesterday. Photo: Craig Baxter<\/p>\n

The driver later told officers that he had been heading home for lunch and \u2018\u2018just wasn’t concentrating\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n

There were no reported injuries and both vehicles needed to be towed from the scene.<\/p>\n

laine.priestley@odt.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hungry driver ran a red light and crashed into an unmarked police car in his bid to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-311969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311969","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=311969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}