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target. ‘‘If you compare it with an athlete who has the vision of being the Olympic swimming champion, then you need to have a target for their event and when they reach it they need to improve it and so on. You can’t just say, ‘I’m better’. You need to measure that towards the target.’’
He says the ‘‘normal reason for not reaching the target is that you haven’t done what you planned’’.
The vision of Vision Zero is just that – it’s an aspiration, it might not be met.
Sweden’s target of 220 deaths by 2020 is looking highly unlikely.
In fact the past few years haven’t been good. There were 253 road deaths last year, and there have been more than 260 already this year.
While it’s a big improvement on the 359 deaths in 2009, it’s still cause for concern. ‘‘One of the reasons is out of our control,’’ Ekman says. ‘‘It’s to do with the temperature of the economy and the nice warm summer. People are out driving quite a lot, and we are struggling with the speed issue. People continue to drive at unsafe speeds.’’
A key to Sweden’s success in lowering the death rate was the implementation of what they call ‘‘2+1 roads’’. On these, each lane of traffic takes turns to use a middle lane for overtaking, with a median barrier – often wire rope – separating the lanes.
‘‘They were central to Vision Zero because they have the same level of safety as a motorway but at only a fraction of the cost,’’ Ekman says.
‘‘They don’t have huge motorway junctions; rather, simple intersections but they have median barriers. And they don’t have a very high level of service, but they’re safe.
‘‘If I had to choose one thing that has made the biggest difference it would be the median barrier. It eliminates the head-on collisions, which are fatal.’’
Australia adopted the Safe System in 2004. In 2003, there were 8.2 deaths per 100,000 people. Last year there were 4.98 (in New Zealand there were 7.9).
David Logan, a senior research fellow at Australia’s Monash University accident research centre, says the decline reflects the level of investment in road safety measures at a state and federal level.
‘‘Targets are very important,’’ he says. ‘‘We talk about Vision Zero all the time but to get there you’ve got to be able to make a path which you can point down with a zero at the end of it.
‘‘We don’t always meet targets, but where we don’t it’s usually due to funding.’’
Logan says wire rope median and side barriers started being erected 20 years ago, but their implementation has taken off only in the past 4-5 years. In his state of Victoria the roading body, VicRoads, aims to have every divided rural highway fully protected by wire rope median and side barriers by 2020. ‘‘They reduce fatal and serious crashes by 85-90 per cent overall, so they’re extraordinarily effective.
‘‘There has also been a lot of effort in speed enforcement, usually by mobile speed cameras in rural and urban areas. We’re working towards matching speed and infrastructure under the Safe System.’’
With wire barriers and other protection such as roundabouts at intersections in rural areas, higher speed limits can be allowed.
‘‘On an undivided road, under the Safe System you shouldn’t be travelling more than 70-80kmh, but at this stage that won’t work politically.’’
Victoria is similar to New Zealand in that it has the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), a statutory injury insurance scheme similar to our Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).
Both schemes have a direct benefit in reducing road trauma, but unlike ACC, TAC invests heavily in roadsafety infrastructure.
It’s two years into a $1 billion investment on infrastructure such as barriers, tactile edge lines, traffic calming, roundabouts, and speed management that aims to reduce deaths and serious injuries on Victorian roads by 30 per cent.
Our ACC typically hasn’t invested in infrastructure.
Given that ACC payments to claimants with road injuries totalled $479 million in 2017-18, it would seem there is sound rationale for spending more on preventive measures.
A proposal by the corporation to increase the average motor vehicle levy from $113.94 to $127.68 to deal with the increasing cost of road accident injuries was canned by the Government this month.
Ironically, this proposal came just four years after the levy was reduced from an average of $333 as acknowledgement of the improved safety features built into modern vehicles, and because ACC had collected enough money to cover historical claims.
An independent evaluation of the Safer Journeys strategy in 2015 found that ACC could play a far more significant role in road safety.
ACC’s chief customer officer, Emma Powell, says the motor vehicle account surplus, which was $33m in 2018, has two specific functions.
‘‘One: to cover the lifetime costs of the injuries on our books, and two, to help smooth levy changes over multiple years, ensuring businesses and households were not impacted by significant levy increases.’’
ACC is ‘‘continually looking’’ at road safety investments, she says.
No conversation about road safety is complete if it does not tackle speed. The 2010-2020 road safety strategy introduced the Safe System, which is essentially ‘‘Vision Zero’’ (in Sweden the two are synonymous).
It aims for a more forgiving road system that accounts for humans making mistakes, does not apportion blame, and spreads responsibility for keeping people safe.
Samuel Charlton, associate professor at Waikato University’s Transport Research Group, says implementing a Safe System is not easy. ‘‘Everyone acknowledges the importance of the Safe System approach . . . but in some places in a country of our size, with the extensive roading network we have, we can’t overnight implement a Safe System. It would bankrupt you and it would bankrupt me.’’
Some solutions are unpalatable, he says. ‘‘If I told you we’re going to have a zero-alcohol limit, that would have an incredible reduction in harm, but people won’t wear that.
‘‘I could tell you we’re going to have a maximum speed limit of 60kmh everywhere. That just doesn’t make sense, but it would be one of the ways to achieve a Safe System.’’
Charlton says we need to understand more about driver behaviour – ‘‘you can’t just look at the numbers’’.
‘‘We need to understand what is behind those numbers, what drivers are doing, what the causes of those crashes are and why drivers are being motivated to do the things they are doing.’’
Speed is perennially the No 1 issue, he says. ‘‘The personal risk is