A car which crashed in central Dunedin, leaving the elderly driver in a serious condition, was reported as travelling more than 100km\/h before the crash, police say.<\/p>\n
Emergency services were called to Rattray St at 10.30am yesterday after reports a vehicle travelled through three intersections crashed into parked cars.<\/p>\n
An Otago Daily Times reporter at the scene said the three empty cars, parked on lower Rattray St, had been shunted forward several\u00a0metres.<\/p>\n
Senior Sergeant Anthony Bond, of Dunedin, said the driver, an 86-year-old woman, told police she had lost control of the car.<\/p>\n
“Said the vehicle suddenly accelerated, was travelling at speeds of around 100km\/h before the crash.”<\/p>\n
Snr Sgnt Bond said the driver was still being assessed by the hospital.<\/p>\n
One man, whose truck was the first hit, said he and his family had been preparing for an afternoon together when the crash happened.<\/p>\n
The man, who declined to give his name, did not witness the crash but understood an elderly driver had “come down flying like a bat out of hell”.<\/p>\n
His truck had been knocked on to the footpath, where it sat damaged and askew with the car\u2019s nose underneath it.<\/p>\n
The man had travelled from Central Otago for a family event but said he was lucky to have another car available to get him home.<\/p>\n
Workers from the nearby Scenic Hotel Southern Cross said they had heard a loud crash \u2014 guests had rung reception to report the sound, one worker said.<\/p>\n
A Hato Hone St John spokeswoman said one ambulance was sent to the scene.<\/p>\n
“Our crew assessed and treated one patient who was transported to Dunedin Hospital in a serious condition.”<\/p>\n
Rattray St was reduced to a single lane for about half an hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A car which crashed in central Dunedin, leaving the elderly driver in a serious condition, was reported as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-62002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62002","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=62002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}