A woman has died and a teenage boy is fighting for his life in an intensive care unit following a head-on crash in rural Canterbury.

Emergency services rushed to the scene of the crash on Old West Coast Road, West Melton at around 11.15pm last night.

A witness to the crash said the road, a state highway running through the Selwyn District was wet at the time emergency services arrived - it had just begun raining.

The straight piece of road saw two cars in crumpled heaps on each side of the stretch.

Rural area commander Pete Cooper confirmed there had been one person in each car when the two collided in a head-on crash.

One driver, a woman aged 60, was killed in the incident, while the other driver - a teenage boy - was critically injured as a result.

Cooper said officers have been unable to chat with the teen as he’s yet to wake up, he’s currently recovering in the ICU at Christchurch Hospital.

One driver, a 60-year-old woman, was killed in the incident, while the other driver - a teenage boy - was critically injured as a result. Photo / George Heard

The Serious Crash Unit completed a scene examination, Cooper said, and the focus was now to determine why one car was on the wrong side of the road.

 “The road is reasonably straight so we wouldn’t call it a high-risk road,” he told the Herald.

“Every road is difficult to navigate if you’re concentrating on something else, at this stage we can’t rule out the road as a factor but it’s not a difficult stretch of road.”

Investigations into the crash will continue at the scene today. The road has since reopened to the public.

Reflecting on the last year, Cooper pointed out this was the 14th road fatality he’d experienced on his district’s rural roads since January.

He called the toll “horrendous”.

“The amount of trauma it’s caused families in rural Canterbury, they’re suffering,” Cooper said.

“Crashes like this one are all preventable. It’s an annual message, but drivers need to take the act of driving seriously.”

Over the weekend, a car carrying a family bound for Mt Hutt crashed and killed two children, critically injuring a third.

The responding fire chief said it was one of the worst crashes his brigade had attended, with a double-fatal being “way out of the norm” for a little town like theirs.