Despite a growing number of Waitaki people calling for lower speed limits in the area, Mr Kircher said this week he believed the transport agency would be "really reluctant" to lower speed limits in the area.
"We need to sort out what are the solutions to try and prevent these incidents — I won’t call them accidents because they are avoidable," he said.
"But yeah, we need to sort that out and if there’s a straightforward fix then that needs to be up at the top of the priority list.
"It might just be an interim thing that’s going to improve the situation — we would rather have that than wait for the perfect solution if that’s too far down the track."
The 39-year-old woman killed in the crash on Tuesday afternoon has yet to be named. A police spokeswoman said police would "be able to release the name when all of the next of kin are advised, and we don’t have a timeline at this stage".
After the fatal crash, which resulted in the ninth death on State Highway 1 from Maheno to Moeraki since 2011, the Otago Daily Times asked the transport agency whether any formal inquiries been made for a reduced speed limit, or if the agency was considering a lowered speed limit for the area. The ODT also asked why other sections of State Highway 1 in Otago had been treated as a higher priority than the stretch of road near Moeraki.
An agency spokeswoman provided background information on a planned investigation of State Highway 1 from Oamaru to Dunedin to begin early in 2017, which said safety projects could include "a combination of roadside and median barriers, curve reduction, rumble strips, widened centrelines, improved signage and road markings, shoulder widening and intersection improvements".
The agency provided a statement from Southern business unit manager Ian Duncan that said the agency viewed every serious crash as a "tragedy" and to comment on the crash would be "inappropriate".
"The people who are involved in road crashes are not statistics, and crash figures don’t tell the story of the huge impact on family and friends when loved ones are killed or seriously injured," he said.
