The perils of driving a campervan in Aotearoa
My driving over the holiday period seemed to cause a lot of aggression. Maybe it was because it was my first experience of driving so extensively during such a busy time and I wasn’t used to the traffic. Or maybe it was because I had suddenly become a terrible driver.
Perhaps, though, it’s because I was driving a campervan. Not one of those big, six-berth, self-contained luxury homes on wheels, but rather a converted
1998 Toyota Estima with 260,000 kilometres on the clock and emblazoned with the brand of the rental company my partner and I hired it from.
Despite being 33 years old and having held a driver licence since I was a teenager, my Christmas-New Year periods are usually filled with work. For the last decade I’ve spent much of this time, like many other Kiwi journalists, writing or editing tragic stories of bad driving and fatal mistakes on New Zealand’s roads.
But this time I took a break, joining my partner on a 10-day road trip around the Catlins and Fiordland. And, while we had an amazing time, far too much of the driving we encountered during our
2049km was selfish and aggressive and one whisker of luck away from causing havoc.
As soon as we hit the road on December 29 we noticed something we’d never experienced while driving our cars: Many drivers seemed unable to bear being behind us, despite the fact we were – other than when climbing hills or on windy roads, when we regularly pulled over to let vehicles pass – travelling at the speed limit and driving well.
Drivers pulled out into small gaps in front of us despite there being no vehicles following us, overtook dangerously, tailgated (do people think that will speed us up if they near nudge us along?) and were general idiots.
We wished we had a dashcam as we also witnessed corner cutting, centre-line crossing and terrible overtaking – our hearts were in our mouths on three occasions as we slammed on the brakes due to vehicles driving on the other side of the road hurtling towards us in our lane.
New Zealand absolutely has issues with some seriously shocking tourist driving, resulting in wary local motorists, but making blind assumptions
‘‘Our hearts were in our mouths on three occasions as we slammed on the brakes due to vehicles driving on the other side of the road hurtling towards us in our lane.’’
about who’s behind the wheel of a rental and their driving doesn’t give other drivers the prerogative to – depressingly ironically – drive so badly.
Many of these aggressive motorists seemed to be driving so poorly because they were in a hurry, keen to drive much faster than the speed limit. Regardless of your opinion on the limits in New Zealand, they are what they are. Drivers have no right to be aggressive towards other motorists whom are driving well and at the limit.
On the converse, there were the drivers whom selfishly held up big lines of traffic. For almost 90km from Tekapo¯ to Geraldine, which is laden with spots to safely pull over to let vehicles pass, we followed a four-wheel-drive towing a horse float. Its speed fluctuated between 75kmh to 90kmh. The line of at least 20 vehicles behind it included three towing boats, a bus and our camper and the offending 4WD seemed to finally pull over to allow its passengers to enter a dairy.
It never happens to you until it does, so aggressive and selfish drivers, it’s time you quit making bad assumptions and started relaxing and caring more