Undiagnosed dementia: Drivers tried to flag down wrong-way motorway driver

An elderly man who was killed with his son while heading the wrong way along the Wellington Motorway for 13.5km had recently had his licence suspended and been told by police to stop driving.

By Ric Stevens for Open Justice

That didn’t stop 76-year-old Lisale Pita Foaese, who had undiagnosed dementia, from climbing behind the wheel on January 19, 2021.

As he drove south from Petone along the northbound carriageway, other drivers tried in vain to get his attention by flashing their headlights and driving alongside him on the other side of the median barrier.

One of them later reported that Foaese appeared “calm and focused”, with no signs of distress, even though he was on the wrong side of the motorway.

He eventually crashed into an oncoming car, killing both himself and his 41-year-old son, George Foaese.

Both men sustained multiple injuries and died at the scene of the crash, 500m north of the Aotea Quay on-ramp in Wellington, at 4.42am.

Two people in the other vehicle, a Holden, were seriously injured but survived, having been unable to avoid Foaese’s oncoming Hyundai Getz hatchback in the three seconds after it came into view around a bend.

According to a coroner’s finding released today, Foaese was in the process of being assessed for dementia, but it was not confirmed that he had a form of the condition until a post-mortem examination of his brain was carried out.

Coroner Heidi Wrigley said in her findings that the father and son lived together in Naenae, Lower Hutt, where Lisale was the primary caregiver for George, who was significantly impaired by paranoid schizophrenia.

Litia Foaese, Lisale’s wife and George’s mother, had died in September 2020. Lisale’s other son, Pila, died unexpectedly two weeks before the crash.

Lisale Foaese was born and grew up in Samoa. Although he had lived in New Zealand since the early 1960s, he was “barely able” to read English, including road signs, and at the time of his death had been showing signs of cognitive decline.

In October 2020, he was found on the winding, rural Makara Rd near Wellington with a Ford Territory vehicle stuck in a ditch facing the wrong way on a blind corner.

He passed a breath-screening test but was in a confused state and could not explain why he was there.

When police spoke to his family about the Makara Rd incident, they advised that he had been going missing, and had been struggling with memory loss since his wife died.

On December 30, 2020, a police officer served him with a directive forbidding him to drive until he had been medically cleared to do so.

On January 6, 2021, he was seen at the Hutt Hospital Emergency Department after the death of his son Pila. He presented as slightly confused, vague and unable to remember his whole date of birth.

On January 14, a notice from the New Zealand Transport Agency was delivered to his home by courier, telling him that his driving licence would be suspended from January 18 and requiring him to return his licence card in a pre-paid envelope.

The licence card was later found at the scene of the crash.

On January 18, the day his licence was suspended and the day before the collision, Lisale drove to the home of a relative, who told him to stop driving.

He laughed in response and asked her for some money for petrol.

Camera footage, eyewitness evidence and a receipt later found in the Hyundai showed that Lisale continued to drive after his suspension came into effect, including to get cigarettes and grocery items from a service station in the early hours of the morning.

Coroner Wrigley said this was consistent with family reports that George would wake Lisale at night to get him to take him somewhere to get cigarettes and whatever else was needed in the house.

After 4am on January 19, Lisale was in the Hyundai on Cornish St in Lower Hutt, with George in the back seat.

Northbound traffic from State Highway 2, which links with the Wellington Motorway, could at that time turn into Cornish St but illuminated “No Entry” and “Wrong Way” signs, along with directional road markings, were installed to prevent drivers from leaving the street that way.

Lisale drove out of the street despite these signs, and turned right, heading south on the northbound lanes of the highway.

Eyewitnesses later reported drivers taking evasive action and flashing their headlights as Lisale drove towards Wellington on the wrong side of the road, which had a median barrier.

A driver who was correctly on the southbound side of the road drove alongside the Hyundai on the other side of the barrier and tried to flag Lisale down by beeping his horn and waving at him.

He also turned on his hazard lights and flashed his headlights, trying to warn oncoming traffic.

A second eyewitness in the southbound lanes called 111 and provided updates to the operator as he kept pace with Lisale’s car.

“He observed that the driver of the Hyundai [Lisale] appeared calm and focused without any signs of apparent distress,” Coroner Wrigley said.

A third eyewitness saw northbound vehicles changing lanes to avoid the Hyundai and called *555 to report what was happening.

By this time, the Hyundai was being monitored by cameras along the route. Police came onto the southbound side of the road but passed the Hyundai on a bend, losing the opportunity to stop him.

Meanwhile, the occupants of the Holden Astra were driving north, on a collision course with the Hyundai.

The Holden driver later told police she saw headlights in front of her and screamed, but could remember little else.

Her front-seat passenger was looking through his bag before the crash and remembers the screaming and looking up to see the headlights.

He thought about grabbing the steering wheel to take evasive action, but is unsure whether he did.

The vehicles collided head-on.

The badly injured pair had to be cut out of the Holden. The Hyundai also had to be cut open to extract Lisale and George’s bodies.

Coroner Wrigley said that post-mortem examination of brain samples showed that Lisale Foaese had a form of dementia known as Lewy body disease.

“I find that the symptoms of Lewy body dementia were the primary reason why Lisale continued to drive the wrong way along [State Highway 2] and then the motorway despite multiple cues indicating that this was occurring,” the coroner said.

“This condition also helps explain how he came to enter SH2 the wrong way in the first place.”

Lewy body dementia typically produces deficits in attention, and affects visuospatial and executive function, including judgment, foresight, appreciation of consequences, cognitive flexibility and social behaviours.

“The deaths of both Lisale and George were preventable,” Coroner Wrigley said.

“At the time of the collision, Lisale was forbidden from driving. I am satisfied that Lisale knew that was so.

“It is axiomatic that compliance with the prohibition would have saved both his life and that of George.”

Coroner Wrigley recommended that the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) consider installing additional electronic signboards over roads where wrong-way driving was difficult to stop, and enable them to alert drivers travelling towards vehicles being driven the wrong way.

Jess Andrew, NZTA’s national manager of system design, said the agency was “acutely aware” of the risks of wrong-way driving and had been considering various interventions, including localised trials.

She said it was a “complex topic”, and the prevention of wrong-way driving was challenging.

At a national level, NZTA had already undertaken work to change or relocate signs.

For the Wellington region, additional safety measures had been implemented on the state highway network, including camera and radar monitoring, and variable electronic messaging which could advise drivers of incidents.

“NZTA is also working with the Wellington Traffic Operations Centre, recording any wrong-way driving incidents for the identification and assessment of any areas of concern or developing trends,” Andrew said.

“It is anticipated that more advanced electronic signage safety measures will be introduced across the Wellington network in the future.”

The end of Cornish St in Lower Hutt, where Foaese exited to turn onto the highway, has been closed.