A man who witnessed a ute lose control and crash near his car during Cyclone Vaianu says the highway’s median barrier most likely saved lives.

Nick Cottier was driving home from a trip to Hawke’s Bay when, around 2pm, a ute driving in the opposite direction spun and collided with the median barrier.

His dashcam caught the vehicle colliding with the barrier, then spinning as debris scattered across the road.

Cottier told the Herald that if it were not for the median barrier on the section of State Highway 1 north of Hamilton, it could have been a fatal accident.

“People could have died easily, no doubt about it, because we’re all doing 100km/h in opposite directions.

“So, yeah, no doubt about it, would have been bad.”

It appeared the ute hydroplaned and lost control before the impact, Cottier said.

“I was worried about it flipping over the median”.

A witness to a crash during Cyclone Vaianu says the median barrier stopped a potentially fatal accident. Photo / Nick Cottier

The road was very wet, and it was raining heavily when the crash happened, he said.

“You kind of read about this sort of stuff, and it just happens in the blink of an eye, you don’t really have much time to react, but it’s pretty freaky.”

Further north on the same stretch of road, Cottier noticed two other accidents where the same thing had happened, he said.

“You could see exactly the same damage to the median barrier, and then they’d get slingshotted across to the other side of the road.

“The cars were just parked on the side of the road with all the front end smashed.”

Thousands of homes were evacuated as Cyclone Vaianu swept through the North Island yesterday, causing slips, flooding, power outages and road closures.

Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell told Newstalk ZB’s Early Edition with Ryan Bridge the cyclone had been “significant” but that people were well prepared.

“It’s been a major event for us. We’ve had 10 local states of emergency. We’ve actually had several thousand houses that were evacuated and about 14,000 that were without power.”

“The good news was that everyone was well prepared, well positioned, and so we’ve been able to sort of keep those impacts to a minimum.”

He said the weather could have been much worse than it was.