A Dunedin mother whose daughter narrowly escaped serious injury in a crash at a controversial St Kilda intersection has added to calls for it to be made safer.
Chanel Dustow was driving a ute which ended up in a hedge on Monday afternoon after a car crashed into her when it failed to give way at the intersection of Market and Tedder Sts.
Ms Dustow, who was on Tedder St, said if she had not accelerated in the last second before the crash, the car would have ''ploughed'' into the rear passenger door next to where her 5-year-old daughter was sitting.
The car collided with the back of her ute. Her daughter escaped with bruising caused by the impact with her safety belt, but the outcome could have been much worse, she said.
She contacted the Otago Daily Times yesterday to join calls from nearby residents for the Dunedin City Council to address confusion at the intersection, which was changed as part of the roll-out of the botched South Dunedin cycle network.
Before the change, the busier Market St had right of way over Tedder St and, like nearby residents, she believed some people used to the old rule were simply driving straight through, not realising Tedder St traffic now had right of way.
Rather than return the layout to the old system, she believed there should be stop signs on both streets.
Returning the intersection to the old layout, as some residents wanted, risked adding to the confusion.
She said if the intersection was not made safer more crashes were inevitable.
Her call for action comes after Graham Andrews, who was sitting in his lounge when the ute tore through the hedge in his yard, said that someone could be ''killed'' if the council did not find a solution.
A council spokesman said staff would evaluate the information it had on the intersection once the police report on the incident had been received.
It would take all recommendations into consideration to ensure road safety.
In the meantime, the crash was a matter for police and insurance companies and until that phase was completed it had no further comment to make.
