The foreign driver accused of crashing into a horse and seriously injuring its rider is giving evidence at his trial.
He says he never hit the horse, but rather the horse hit his car.
Chinese national 28-year-old Peng Wang is on trial at the North Shore District Court, charged with careless driving causing injury after the horror crash on Postman Rd in Auckland's Dairy Flat in 2016.
More than eight months after the August crash, horse rider and Newshub journalist Karen Rutherford is still recovering from her injuries, including a de-gloved leg and difficulty with her memory.
The horse she was riding was killed.
Speaking through an interpreter, Wang said he'd seen two riders, Ms Rutherford and her teenage daughter Ella, from 80 metres away on the long, straight stretch of road.
Wang said he reduced his speed from 50km/h to 45km/h. He said he thought the riders were police because they were wearing reflective jackets.
He said he re-positioned the car so his right wheel was touching the centre line, but didn’t want to cross it, because he thought that would be against the law. After passing the first horse Ella was riding, he says Ms Rutherford's horse changed direction and lurched in toward him, hitting his car.
His version of events is strongly disputed by the two riders.
Earlier in the trial, 13-year-old Ella Rutherford described how she and her mother saw Wang's grey van coming toward them at about 80km/h, the speed limit on Postman Road.
She says Wang never slowed down, and hugged the white line on the left shoulder of the road, not the centre line, as he testified. Ella Rutherford said she signalled wildly with her hands for the driver to slow down. Wang says he not see her signals.
He was driving on a Chinese license. A New Zealand one is not required until after a year in the country.
Wang admitted he has never read the New Zealand road code, but tried to learn about driving from those he was visiting on his business trip.
Judge Jonathan Down has indicated he will deliver a verdict on Wednesday afternoon in the judge-alone trial.
- Chinese driver's crash killed horse, seriously injured rider
- Mark Sainsbury: Navigating foreign drivers and the road to racism
Newshub.
