Image On NZ Rental Car Company's Website Shows Car Driving On Wrong Side of the Road

One of New Zealand's biggest rental car companies is now having to remove a picture from its website which shows a motorist driving on the wrong side of the road.

Hertz couldn't confirm how long the image had been on the home page of its website but New Zealand country manager Mark Righton says they get a lot of their pictures off their parent site, Hertz.com.

It comes just after Tourism NZ was left scrambling to correct a promotional video it commissioned from American online videographer Devin Super Tramp which showed a campervan driving on the wrong side of the road.

Tourism NZ is currently trying to get the video fixed but was this morning still incorrect.

As for Hertz, Mr Righton says it's the first time he's seen the image on its website.

"That's obviously come through from our global site ... we change our images quite regularly, obviously, so that's the first time I've seen that particular shot so our marketing department has obviously changed that and shuffled it through and obviously that's not a good one for Hertz.co.nz ... So, I will have a look at that and we will get that fixed considering the current environment and trying to keep people safe."

Mr Righton went on to do defend the picture, stating that its 'New Zealand Safe Driver Tips' were also on its home page, directly next to the picture.

"On that front page you've got the whole NZ safe driving tips right beside that image and clearly in that is all the information about driving safely in New Zealand and links through to drive safe and the top tips and keep left, but it's a good point, we just need to make sure that our images are in line with that ... It's probably a new campaign that came out on October 1. It's popped up and someone hasn't noticed that they've grabbed a slide from there."

Damage control

Tourism New Zealand's video featuring a campervan driving on the wrong side of the road has been viewed online more than 300,000.

The agency went into damage control last night as it scrambled to fix the blunder, which has been described as alarming and breathtakingly incompetent.

The video, produced by American social media videographer Devin Super Tramp and his team, is dubbed New Zealand - The Ultimate Road Trip.

It has chalked up hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook and YouTube.

Taxpayers funded the online adventurers around Aotearoa for two weeks in January, providing flights, accommodation, rental vehicles and exclusive access to the country's top tourists spots including Hobbiton.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive Kevin Bowler said yesterday the agency would never endorse anyone driving on the wrong side of the road and when it found out about the gaffe on Friday it requested the footage be pulled down or fixed immediately.

The man who spotted the error, who did not want to be named, said while the video itself was fantastic, he was stunned to see a campervan travelling in the right-hand lane of a scenic highway near the start of the five-minute video.

The man said he wrote about the mistake on Tourism New Zealand's Facebook page to which he says it responded, "It's a camera trick, the campervan was on the left-hand side but the imagery was flipped."

"So not only did they completely miss the point, they intentionally put the van on the wrong side of the road.

"It does make Tourism NZ look really silly."

AA spokesman Mike Noon said it sounded like a mistake had been made, but he'd like to see it rectified as soon as possible.

"I would have thought they would have been very careful on those things; normally they are. It seems to me like someone's made a mistake and it should be fixed... there's a very small chance that it could cause a problem. I'm sure they'll fix it."

Mr Bowler said the botch-up happened during the video's production process; the makers flipped the image for "artistic reasons".

"As soon as we found out about it we realised how significant it was and how stupid it was... then we discovered that he wasn't driving on the wrong side of the road, he just turned the film around because artistically he wanted it to look the way it looks."

Mr Bowler said Tourism New Zealand "assisted" Devin Super Tramp and his team to come to New Zealand to produce the content in the hope that it would promote the country.

The video has since been removed from YouTube.

-NZHerald