Tina Dudley was sitting at her north Canterbury home on September 9 when she got a panicked phone call from her daughter Kayla.
"She says 'mum, I've killed somebody', and I just went 'what? Where are you', she said 'Tram Road off-ramp'."
Tina rushed to her car and drove the ten minutes from her home in Mandeville to the crash site in Kaiapoi. Once there she found her daughter in an ambulance. Although shaken, she was okay. The other driver was being cut from her car.
While driving across the overbridge, a motorist making a right from the off-ramp pulled out and Kayla had no time to stop. Both women survived the crash but their vehicles were written off.
While at the scene, Tina says she was caught off-guard by the attitude of emergency services who were all too familiar with the crash rate.
"A police officer said 'yeah, this is a bad intersection', and then the fireman said, 'yeah this is a bad intersection' and then another person said 'yeah, we know this is a bad intersection'," she told Newshub.
"I'm thinking 'if you know it's a bad intersection, when are you going to do something about it?' Tram Road is a death trap."
Since January 1 2015, there have been 26 crashes recorded at the Tram Road overbridge which lies across the Christchurch Northern Motorway, according to data supplied to Newshub by the NZTA.
Eleven of those took place the same off-ramp area where Kayla's serious crash occurred - eight non-injury and two minor injury with six taking place since January 1 this year.
The five-year statistics include one fatal accident, resulting in the death of motorcyclist Ben Caldicott-Elwell who died at the intersection after colliding with a trailer in 2017.
Tina says changes must be made to prevent further accidents, including implementing lower travel speeds and installing cameras to ticket motorists not following the rules.
Waka Kotahi North Canterbury maintenance contract manager Barry Stratton told Newshub the overwhelming majority of crashes at these two intersections were caused by drivers failing to give way or stop and/or poor observation.
"Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency has received a number of calls/complaints about the Tram Road off-ramp and the left and right-hand turn options at the top of the off-ramp over the last five years," he said.
This includes four from this year. Among the concerns, motorists reported "hard to see traffic on the right and short merge lane to left" and "lack of signage warning of merge with Tram Road".
Tina was one of the complainants, arguing that visibility is obstructed due to the native plantings.
"There are blind spots when you come off the Tram Road exit, there is a guard rail and there are plantings," she says.
"You cannot see the cars coming unless you really pull out, then if you pull out, you always pull over the side of the road, because everybody's coming so fast."
Mayor Dan Gordon told Newshub residents have raised safety concerns with him and the wider council regarding the Tram Rd intersection.
"With this in mind, I had a discussion with NZTA's director of regional relationships Jim Harland to raise these concerns and asked for the safety issues be considered," he said.
"I have further arranged for a meeting with Tina along with Jim Harland myself and Councillors, to share these safety issues and concerns with a view that the intersection safety is formally reviewed by NZTA."
Tina hopes action is taken soon before another life is lost.
"It's mind-boggling, so many people know but nobody's willing to speak up about it, so I'm speaking up."
