A crash at Outram in which five intellectually disabled people were hurt when a van rolled was one of the series of serious crashes in which at least 11 people were injured, including three who had to be cut from vehicles and three flown to Dunedin Hospital.
In the first crash of the day, three injured people were flown to Dunedin with moderate injuries, after a driver lost control on the gravel Ranfurly-Patearoa Rd, just after 8am.
The car flipped and landed upside down in a ditch.
The fourth person was treated at Maniototo Hospital in Ranfurly.
Just before 10am, three trucks collided on State Highway 6, about 14km south of Luggate, when the third in the line of trucks swerved to avoid a cyclist, hit the truck in front and then went off the road and plunged 30m down a gully.
The driver had to be cut from the truck and was treated at the Cromwell Medical Centre for moderate arm, leg and head injuries.
At 12.45pm, a 64-year-old Dunedin woman received minor injuries when the car she was driving left State Highway 8 just north of Millers Flat and ploughed into an orchard .
At 1.36pm, five intellectually disabled people and their driver were taken to Dunedin Hospital after the van they were in rolled several times on Mountfort St in Outram. Police said the van was travelling from Outram towards Dunedin when it appeared to have gone out of control in gravel at the side of the road near the Taieri River bridge. Two people had to be cut from the vehicle.
One person received serious injuries and the rest had moderate to minor injuries, a St John spokeswoman said.
Just before 4pm, several adults and a baby were lucky to escape injury when two cars sideswiped each other on SH8 at Butcher's Dam, south of Alexandra.
Senior Sergeant Steve Larking, of Dunedin, said police had no idea why there had been so many crashes on Otago roads yesterday.
Last month, the Otago Regional Council's transport committee agreed to introduce a strategy aimed at improving road safety in the region.
This followed publication of New Zealand Transport Agency statistics showing Otago and Southland had the worst road-crash and casualty figures on urban state highways and local and urban roads in New Zealand over the past five years.
At the time, ORC transport committee chairman Stephen Woodhead said the figures were an indictment of the habits of drivers in Otago.
