Skid row: Dunedin drivers slip and slide on ice-rink road

What do you get when you combine a hard frost, no grit and an off-camber corner?

A slow-motion pantomime of morning commuters sliding across the road on a sheet of ice.

• Icy morning crashes on same stretch of motorway

That was the situation at the corner of London and Scotland Sts in central Dunedin this morning.

As motorists came around the corner they suddenly realised all grip was gone and applied the brakes.

Unfortunately this just meant they kept moving downhill - in one case only stopping when they hit a parked car.

A Good Samaritan neighbour came out to help with some hot water to melt away the ice.

One driver was left stranded in the middle of the road unable to continue until a more experienced driver volunteered to take the wheel and negotiate a path down the slope.

Icy conditions have caused havoc on roads around the city and the wider region in the past few days. A crash on Dunedin's Southern Motorway this morning occurred in the same stretch as a more serious one yesterday, and NZTA says several other crashes have been reported across the region.

- Allied Media