Safer roads need safer drivers
With the holiday period looming, it’s difficult to imagine a target set by the police for New Zealand’s road toll this year being achieved. At the end of Sunday, the toll for 2018 stood at 357, 21 fewer than the 378 recorded for the whole of last year. The police target is to drop the toll by 5 per cent each year from the end of a disastrous 2017, which means reducing it by at least 19. So short of an exceptionally safe holiday period, it won’t be achieved.
Which is not to say we shouldn’t be aiming for that, but the unfortunate reality is that it probably won’t happen. We will hopefully manage to dip under the 2017 tally – 357 is two fewer than the toll at December 16 last year. But even if last year’s toll is beaten by some margin, that has to be seen in context. The 2017 number was an increase of nearly half
(48.8 per cent) on the toll of 254 just four years earlier, in 2013. So 2018 is already a disastrous year, and big changes are required.
Even if the police target is missed, the fact there is one is important. In an extensive Stuff report about the ‘‘Vision Zero’’ approach to road safety, published at the weekend, David Logan, from the Monash University accident research centre in Victoria, pointed out that to aim for an aspirational target – such as a zero road toll, which Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter has talked up – ‘‘you’ve got to be able to make a path which you can point down with a zero at the end of it’’.
As the old saying goes, ‘‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’’. Breaking a difficult target down into achievable increments makes each milestone seem more possible.
Deciding on a strategy usually reignites the ageold debate about whether it’s bad driving or unsafe roads that are responsible for the rising toll. That’s frustrating because both are clearly factors, and there are several others too, such as lower fuel prices, which lead to more discretionary road trips, as an Australian study has found.
Realistically, any strategy which is to have a reasonable chance of success must focus on the steps that offer the best potential reductions for the funds available.
Transport Minister Phil Twyford’s words in launching the $1.4 million Safe Network Programme on Sunday have a touch of the nanny state about them – ‘‘Drivers will inevitably make mistakes and it’s the Government’s job to stop those mistakes turning into tragedies’’ – but it’s clear that safety measures such as wire rope median barriers and side barriers are the way to go. Logan says they reduce ‘‘fatal and serious crashes by 85-90 per cent overall’’, which is difficult to argue with.
Problem stretches totalling 870 kilometres have been identified, to be made safer by 2021. The estimate is that the completed programme will prevent 160 deaths and serious injuries a year, so we won’t know exactly what effect it has had until we’re a year down the road from the programme’s completion, but the projections are encouraging.
They must presumably be a first target, though. Assuming it’s achieved, what’s next? Funding, and the potential for a change in government, may limit what can ultimately be achieved through infrastructural change, so the focus on teaching better driving habits, and the stringent policing of those habits, simply can’t be allowed to slip.
Realistically, any strategy which is to have a reasonable chance of success must focus on the steps that offer the best potential reductions for the funds available.