A truck and car have collided on SH2 near Ngatea about 4pm this afternoon.

Motorists are warned there may be delays as the road is cleared after an accident involving a small truck and red car.

The accident happened at Mangatarata, south of the Coromandel roundabout on SH2.

A Tauranga resident, Talia Harvey, was also travelling the same stretch of road, pulling over to give assistance to the occupants of the vehicles.

'I was so close to being in it,” says Talia Harvey who was returning to Tauranga from Auckland. 'There was a grey car between me and the red car, and it had been raining.

'The red car crossed the median as the truck approached. It looked like they both then turned hard in the opposite direction. The truck hit the side of the red car and rolled into my lane.

'The grey car in front of me turned left and ended up in the middle of the paddock. Luckily the grey car didn't roll and the female driver and her two young girls were not harmed.

'In the red car was a male driver. He had a five-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy in the back sleeping. The girl has hurt her collar bone. The boy has hurt both arms, breaking one of them.

'The male driver in the truck jumped out immediately with no injuries. I called 111 immediately and ran to the red car. The driver had jumped out and grabbed his daughter out. I climbed in the car to tend to the boy as he was asleep. It took me a while to wake him up so not sure if the crash had knocked him out.”

Talia said a Tauranga couple who also stopped to help were travelling to Auckland.

The NZ Fire Service, ambulance, police and a rescue helicopter attended the scene.

'A rescue helicopter from Whitianga took the driver and the two children. I'm not sure whether they were taken to Starship or Waikato, as they mentioned both," says Talia. "Prior to that a few ambulances had tended to everyone.”

Talia, who had been travelling alone back to Tauranga, was at the scene of the accident for over an hour, before travelling on to Waihi, where she stopped for a rest break.

'I'm still in shock,” says Talia. 'The male driver was definitely in shock the whole time. I feel terrible for him. You can just see how bad he felt. And the children were so close in age to my younger two. They had the kids in separate ambulances and the five-year-old girl told me she just wanted to be with her brother. Kids are resilient though. I'm praying for the poor dad though, I feel awful for how awful I know he feels.”