We want you with us for Christmas
Losing our young on the roads is heartbreaking. It’s time we raised the driving age again.
‘T is the season for regular pleas from the police for us all to be better behaved on New Zealand’s roads this summer. I must have conducted hundreds of interviews over the years with earnest inspectors and constables who have really important messages – slow down, don’t drink and drive, wear your seatbelt, take a nap. We need these messages more than we ever have, with a shocking 2017 road toll already outstripping the whole of last year’s. But plainly we’re not listening. Sometimes you need a slice of real life to yank you out of complacency. A glimpse behind the curtain, if you like. We got that this week, and it was bloody terrifying. On Facebook, Inspector Wayne Ewers wrote a long ‘‘day in the life’’ post of his trip home from Kerikeri to Whangarei last Thursday, bearing a mobile radar gun. It’s 85km by winding road. Wayne seems like a good bloke; he’s no Shakespeare, but his post builds tension like the best Stephen King novel.
‘‘My first encounter was a Subaru station wagon that came over the brow of a hill onto the Pakaraka strait travelling at 123km/h ...’’
A stop in Moerewa to attend a ‘‘family harm incident’’ makes him late for dinner; he texts his wife and says he’ll see her at 8:30pm.
At Waiomio Hill he finds a modified double-cab flat-deck (raised chassis, oversized rims) flying down the hill at 116kmh. He has a moment of internal struggle – ‘‘do I really need to stop it?’’ – then sees the passenger is not wearing a seatbelt. When he pulls it over, he finds a bunch of unrestrained teens. The driver is on a learner’s licence with breaches of conditions. Wayne is a kind man, offers compliance and gives him an 0800 number for a service to help him progress to a full licence. A restricted driver takes the wheel.
Should have told the wife 9pm, thinks Wayne. He drives on.
As he crests the Towai hill he clocks a Nissan Skyline passing other cars at 143km/h. Another 19-year-old learner driver. ‘‘A lengthy discussion on the high road toll ensues,’’ says Wayne, which I really hope was stronger on Wayne’s part than he makes it sound. The driver’s licence is suspended with a $510 fine, and his girlfriend takes the wheel.
Wayne checks his watch and remembers that his wife has had more than 30 years to get used to this.
North of Hikurangi he stops to talk to a colleague who has pulled over a driver doing 151km/h. The driver has also been drinking.
As he drives away, the first vehicle approaching locks in at 135km/h. He pulls the car over and finds a woman in her 40s with a zero alcohol licence and the smell of booze about her. Wayne texts his wife again; see you at 9:30pm.
He drives the woman to Whangarei station; on the way he finds she has been drinking gin from a plastic cup on the dash all the way from Helensville (near Auckland.) By the time you read this she will have been in court for her fourth drink driving charge, ‘‘showing no remorse ... but worried she might be in jail for Christmas.’’
At 11pm Wayne walks in to eat his lukewarm dinner. He wakes up his wife because he needs to tell someone about the day he’s had.
Better work stories indeed. When I spoke to Wayne this week he was insistent that speed remains the major threat, and he was pretty sad about the number of people who still don’t wear seatbelts.
Road safety groups have long reminded us that road crashes are not ‘‘accidents’’ but preventable events.
Young drivers like the ones caught and counselled by Wayne Ewers dominate the statistics in a heartbreaking way. The Ministry of Transport Young Driver 2016 report shows that in 2015, drivers between 15 and 25 were involved in 90 fatal crashes, 579 serious crashes and 2508 minor injury crashes. They bore primary responsibility in 72 fatals, 464 serious and 1993 minor injury crashes. The total social cost of those amounted to almost $100 million – 25 per cent of the cost of all injuries.
Experts like Waikato University’s transport psychologist Dr Robert Isler suggest raising the driving age further, to 18. Sixteen is still too young, he says.
On Friday, police and the NZTA launched their ‘We want you here for Christmas’ campaign. Politicians are now looking at the merits of a ‘‘Vision Zero’’ policy, a commitment to eradicate road deaths altogether, which has halved road deaths since 2000.
Technology will begin to play its part with built-in breathalysers and eventually self-driving cars, which already have far fewer accidents than those driven by humans.
The key appears to be a refusal to accept any road deaths, period, and then work hard to make that happen. Until then, Inspector Wayne Ewers’ day in the life shows we have a long, long road to travel.
Ali Mau hosts RadioLive Drive, 3-6pm weekdays.