New safety zone creates a new hazard
Further to your article in the Herald on October 20 about the school safety zones in Puriri St, I wish to add the following comments:
I do not for one moment disagree with the school and the council regarding the need for a school safety zone – it should have happened a long time ago.
Pedestrians, especially schoolchildren, are largely ignored when road decisions are made.
It is just that the safety zone as it is at present just adds to the congestion, because it is on a narrow part of the road, and, in my view, creates another traffic hazard.
I wonder if the council has actually test-run the new road layout with two cars passing in opposite directions within the white lines at their narrowest part, let alone tried it when the Gleniti bus is coming down the road.
A far more sensible option, in my opinion, would be to create another safety island in the middle of the road, like that on Church St, adjacent to Countdown, and the newer one on forcing tight delivery times. Commercial imperatives have nothing to do with public interest and may never be used as an excuse to compromise public safety.
On the roadways of New Zealand truck companies and independent operators are theoretically subject to the same laws that govern us all.
So the road transport industry can never claim priority status – in fact, historically the opposite is true.
Because of their overwhelming size, trucks were previously seen as dangerous and unwelcome intruders into the public domain of New Zealand’s roading network and were stringently controlled.
Today, public safety is, in my view, a very distant ‘‘also-ran’’ behind the layers of commercial the bypass at Dee St.
The new safety zone (one in the middle of the road and the other two by the footpaths) would be sited opposite the IHC House and just up from the playground.
There are a number of car parks in the large paved area near interest linked to the road transport industry.
We’ve all heard about the few ‘‘bad apples’’ – I have to say my own experience down south was that the whole darn orchard seemed rotten.
Every second driver will treat you to a high speed tailgate, hornblast, buzz-pass, or force you to pull over no matter how narrow and dangerous the berm.
What competency assessment and training does the road transport industry provide for people driving these vehicles so recklessly on our roads? My bet would be none.
I understand engine drivers on freight trains have a six-month training period, after the character checks and the fitness testing, as well as continuous competency assessment. The big difference, of the playground which could be used, instead of parents and caregivers trying to rescue children from the school side of the road, which is what happens now. Annette Jarrold Timaru course, is chances are you’ll never be at the mercy of bad judgment by a train driver but you certainly will be by a truck driver if you have the temerity to drive a camper in the South Island.
It is not uncommon throughout the world, where tourism is preponderant, that local populations become ambivalent, hostile, exploitative, and generally grumpy towards tourists. But in many high profile destinations the opposite is the case. Most of the time tourists feel welcome and safe in New Zealand. In my opinion, how much longer that can be said of the South Island depends on far more effective policing of what has become for many visitors an increasingly unattractive element of their Kiwi experience.
J Jerringham Rodney (Abridged)