Caution: Kiwis behind the wheel
Reducing the carnage on our roads is achievable. After all, it’s been done overseas. But we might need to change the way we think about road safety. Marty Sharpe and Damian George investigate.
It’s huge, and it’s full: 335 passengers on board. There are children entertaining themselves with colouring books, parents settling toddlers, young couples choosing movies, older couples holding hands.
You walk down one aisle, and back the other, catching people’s eyes as you pass. As you’re about to step off the Airbus A330 aircraft, you take a second look.
It’s a lot of people but it’s still short of the number of people killed on New Zealand roads this year.
You’ve heard it before, no doubt you’ll hear it again. 2018 has been a shocking year for road fatalities, with 355 killed as of yesterday afternoon. . With the deadly holiday period approaching, that puts us on track to match the 378 deaths last year, and the number may be our worst in nine years.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the Safer Journeys road safety strategy 2010-2020 was launched, then transport minister Steven Joyce said it set out directions and actions to reduce road deaths and injuries.
We did well for three years, which might more fairly be attributed to measures in the 2000-2010 strategy that had a goal of no more than 300 deaths.
In 2010, there were 375 deaths and 2289 serious injuries. Three years later, that dipped to 254 deaths and 1981 serious injuries but by last year was up to 378 deaths and 2832 serious injuries.
Ironically, Safer Journeys said a new approach was needed and that if nothing changed we could expect to see 400 road deaths by 2020.
You could label current Safer Journeys a failure. But unlike its predecessor, the 2010-2020 document had no firm ‘‘target’’ of total road deaths against which its progress could be measured. Instead, it aimed for ‘‘a safe road system increasingly free of death and serious injury’’.
An independent evaluation of the strategy noted this absence of measurable targets, saying ‘‘it is difficult to conclude anything else than that the lack of a set of national targets for significant reductions in road fatalities and serious injuries is having an effect on the safety experienced by road users in Zealand’’.
The Transport Ministry now acknowledges this was a weakness, and says having measurable outcomes will be part of the new strategy, due late next year.
Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter agrees measurable outcomes are important.
This year’s policy statement on land transport and the 2015-18 national land transport programme certainly indicate that safety is to be a higher priority than it has been previously.
Sweden features in many discussions about road safety. It’s held up as the gold standard, partly because it has reduced the number of road deaths, but mostly because it created the revolutionary ‘‘Vision Zero’’ approach in 1997.
Adopted by many other countries (including Australia), most American states and the United Nations, it was said to turn the traditional approach to road safety on its head. Simply put, it puts people first and is founded on the principle that ‘‘it can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured when moving within the road transport system’’.
Vision Zero does not mean ‘‘zero crashes’’. Rather, it is that zero deaths and serious injuries are an acceptable product of mobility.
In developing its new strategy, the New Zealand Government is investigating adopting a Vision Zero approach.
Ministry manager of mobility and safety Brent Johnston says the strategy will probably include ‘‘measurable interim metrics’’ against which progress can be measured.
‘‘Whether they’re hard targets, we haven’t worked through that process yet . . . If we just focus on deaths alone I think we miss the big picture in terms of serious injuries. The focal point . . . is [to] reduce this incredible amount of trauma, of which deaths are a smaller percentage.’’
Lars Ekman, a safety expert at Sweden’s Transport Administration, gives talks around the world on the design, implementation and evaluation of Vision Zero. Ask him if targets are important and the phone line to Kristianstad goes momentarily silent. ‘‘It’s utterly important,’’ he then says. If we have a long-term vision the only way to reach that is by having a 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 . . . 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.’’
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 unlikely. In fact the past few years haven’t been good. There were 253 road deaths last year, and 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.
‘‘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 investment in road safety measures at a state and federal level. ‘‘Targets are very important. We talk about Vision Zero all the time but to get there you’ve got to be able to make a path . . . 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 implementation has taken off in the past 4-5 years. ‘‘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.’’
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 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 and speed management that aims to reduce deaths and serious injuries 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 . . . 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.’’
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 . . . do the things they are doing.’’
Speed is perennially the No 1 issue, he says. ‘‘The most dangerous road is one where people’s perceived safe speed, or the speed that feels right, doesn’t match the official speed. That’s the situation where some follow the rule and others do what feels comfortable, and it’s particularly hazardous."
Automobile Association road safety spokesman Dylan Thomsen has no doubt lowering the speed limit to 80kmh for open roads with no dividing barrier would save lives.
But it would fix only part of the problem, and surveys show we don’t want to go slower for the sake of it. ‘‘[People are] not averse to speed limits coming down, but they want an approach which looks at speed limits, upgrading the roads, and doing the [safety] work.’’
And the Government agrees. It has ruled out a blanket speed-limit reduction, and as part of Safe System, has tasked local roading authorities with identifying their top 10 per cent of riskiest roads.
But while lowering limits might not be popular, it can be done. Earlier this year, France cut the speed limit on secondary roads without a dividing barrier from 90kmh to 80kmh.
The 2015 evaluation of Safer Journeys noted that our speed limits were high compared with other countries and ‘‘almost universally exceed what might be regarded as speed limits which are aligned to Safe System analysis’’.
The evaluation was also critical of the police’s standard enforcement tolerance of 10kmh above the limit, which was ‘‘well above what can be considered good practice’’.
Police staff have also questioned the sense of this tolerance.
At a transport safety seminar in 2016, police manager of research and evaluation Nils Van Lamoen said other jurisdictions had started operating with reduced or zero thresholds, and that reducing or removing the threshold ‘‘reduces the de facto speed limit’’.
Charlton agrees. ‘‘The problem is the public view it as the de facto speed limit and how you get them to feel unaggrieved when they get a ticket at the speed limit is really difficult.
‘‘Of course the speed tolerance came in when speedometers and speed guns were not seen as accurate. They’re very accurate now.
Police national manager of road policing Superintendent Steve Greally would not comment on why there was a speed threshold. The detection threshold is routinely reduced in support of various national road safety operations throughout the year accompanied by public messaging,’’ he said.
Something else the 2015 evaluation criticised was the ‘‘very low’’ fines and demerit points for speeding, relative to the risk. It questioned why demerit points weren’t applied to speed camera-detected offending, and the relatively few speed cameras compared with other countries.
Speed enforcement is a focus of the Government’s new safety strategy and ‘‘a part of this work is ensuring that our approach to speed enforcement is appropriate, which includes speed camera fines and demerits, as well as use of speed cameras and other enforcement techniques’’.
The Transport Ministry is undertaking an Offences and Penalties Review, which will look at ensuring infringement fees are proportionate to risk. It is also looking into whether there should be more speed cameras, and whether organisations such as councils should be able to operate their own cameras.
Police here operate 48 static and 44 mobile cameras, and the Transport Agency has 18 in Auckland’s Waterview Tunnel. Sweden has 1615 and a further 175 planned each year. It has about 141,000km of public road; New Zealand has 94,000km.
There are no mobile, unmarked speed cameras in Sweden, a deliberate strategy designed to increase the likelihood of getting caught without undermining public trust.
Conversely, in Victoria, unmarked mobile speed cameras are considered vital to the success in reducing the death rate (from 303 in 2008, when the population was 5.4m, to 230 last year, when the population was 6.3m).
While our ministry considers whether a hard target of reducing road deaths is necessary in the next road safety strategy, police already have one – a five per cent reducution every year from 2017.
The 2015 evaluation was critical of what it said was a ‘‘bipartisan road safety problem in Parliament’’, illustrated by legislation around driver licensing and drink-driving having only just caught up with what was considered normal in other countries 20 years before.
It recommended setting up a parliamentary road safety committee or a sub-committee of the transport and industrial relations committee.
Andy Foster, president of Trafinz – the body representing councils on road safety and traffic management – says it has been calling ‘‘for years’’ for an independent, adequately resourced road safety champion.
‘‘We need someone who can tell it like it is, who can tell the government when it’s done something well, and when it’s done something poorly. Without fear or favour.’’
Genter says, ‘‘we are currently looking at a variety of governance models for the road safety programme. There will, unfortunately, be a temptation for some politicians to oppose evidence-base solutions to score political points.
‘‘We know, for example, that changing the speed limit from 100kmh to 80kmh on a dangerous road can have a huge safety benefit and almost no impact on travel times. Yet it’s not uncommon to see political opposition to such moves.
‘‘With the increasing number of people being killed and seriously injured on our roads, I expect it will become difficult for politicians to oppose sensible, evidence-based road safety measures.’’
In April, Genter said that ‘‘no loss of life is acceptable’’, and the Government was investigating setting a target of zero road deaths.
‘‘I accept that a target of zero deaths would be audacious, but ambitious targets are needed to focus the resources of both central and local government to save lives on our roads.
‘‘No other industry accepts hundreds of people dying each year as normal. No person I know thinks losing a loved one in a crash is an acceptable price to pay for living in a modern society.’’