Canterbury’s top police officer has condemned the behaviour of dangerous drivers, following a spate of serious and fatal accidents in the region.

It follows yesterday’s crash where a driver crashed his car on Lincoln Road just before 5pm, rolling it several times into other cars, seriously injuring himself.

The man, understood to be a gang member, in his 20s, was transported to Christchurch hospital.

A car had been captured on CCTV excessively speeding and driving on the wrong side of Lincoln Road, just seconds before the crash.

Canterbury Police District Commander Superintendent John Price told Chris Lynch “it’s very clear that a person has, at speed, gone through a controlled intersection, through red lights. The chances of having a crash are extremely high and that has occurred in this case.”

He said one person was seriously injured and that was the driver of the vehicle.

“It was very lucky for those innocent people on our roads, who were just going about their normal travels. Their vehicles were damaged, but there were no serious injuries to those people.”

“We just say to all drivers no matter what the time of the day it is, please if you come to the controlled intersection, stop, wait, keep yourself safe and all other road users.”

Superintendent Price couldn’t confirm if police had pursued the vehicle, but said whenever police are near where a crash occurs, there are mechanisms that we follow through when we have the normal investigation around the crash.”

“We also investigate our staff and the practices, policies, and procedures that were supposed to followed when stopping vehicles to make sure that’s been adhered to, so we working through with our investigation to ensure that if police were involved, to what extent and could we do things differently in the future.”

He said “but at the end of the day, it’s the driver of the vehicle who’s at fault – the behaviour and the actions are what’s important.”

CCTV footage obtained by Chris Lynch Media last night shows a car speeding on Lincoln Road, just moments before the crash occurred.

Superintendent Price said “no one should behave like that.”

“People have a licence to drive and that means driving to the conditions and the regulations and the laws that we as a society set for people to adhere to.”

“If you’re impeded in any way, you put someone else innocently at risk, and we saw that earlier in the week with that terrible fatality on Marshland Road where a female driver of a vehicle was just driving along was hit by another vehicle.”

62-year-old Rachael Florence Harris, died at the scene.

A 29-year-old was charged with dangerous driving causing death, and was due to appear in Christchurch District Court on Tuesday 31 August.

Superintendent Price said “all these things are preventable if people just adhere to the conditions on the roads.”