{"id":565253,"date":"2026-08-11T02:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T02:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/565253\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T02:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T02:12:10","slug":"driverless-car-travelled-300m-after-four-vehicle-crash-on-aucklands-southern-motorway-witness-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/565253\/","title":{"rendered":"Driverless car travelled 300m after four-vehicle crash on Auckland\u2019s Southern Motorway, witness says"},"content":{"rendered":"
He suspected the driver had \u201cdone a runner\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of a sudden, the door on the driver\u2019s side flung open and there\u2019s heaps of smoke coming out of the car,\u201d Hales told the Herald. <\/p>\n
\u201cI drive up behind it thinking, \u2018man, there\u2019s someone in there hurt or something\u2019. I look in and there\u2019s no one in there. And here\u2019s the car still going along the motorway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think, \u2018flipping heck, this isn\u2019t good. There\u2019s no one in the car and the car\u2019s still going\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hales said he raced ahead of the driverless car and pulled over to try to stop the SUV, which \u201cwasn\u2019t going too fast\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI run back down the motorway towards the car and try and push it to stop, and it wouldn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I let the car go past, and then I run up beside the car \u2026 and I jumped in the car, because the door was open, and pulled the handbrake on.\u201d<\/p>\n
A witness stopped the car by jumping into the vehicle and pulling on its handbrake.<\/p>\n
He said the SUV travelled about 200m-300m before he managed to stop it.<\/p>\n
Police and fire crews arrived shortly after. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was bizarre \u2026 I still can\u2019t believe it happened to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hato Hone St John said three patients were assessed at the scene, with no one taken to hospital.<\/p>\n
Police have been approached for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He suspected the driver had \u201cdone a runner\u201d. \u201cAll of a sudden, the door on the driver\u2019s side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4882,74,3952,9218,3944,15293,3549,19552,44867,65062,5749,2944,2205,17095,36660,278199,59919,3945,111,43,139,69,90,45641,312,171,1324,54178,3603],"class_list":["post-565253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-300m","tag-after","tag-aucklands","tag-before","tag-car","tag-continued","tag-crash","tag-driver","tag-driverless","tag-fourvehicle","tag-hundred","tag-inside","tag-involved","tag-jumped","tag-metres","tag-minus","tag-motorist","tag-motorway","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-passing","tag-says","tag-southern","tag-stop","tag-travelled","tag-witness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565253","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=565253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}