Tourist drivers should have T-plates
Iknow the road between Auckland and Rotorua like the back of my hand. I learned to drive on the open road when Dad would make me drive myself back to boarding school after a weekend at home.
He’d dutifully tag along for the ride, sitting beside me, no doubt with white knuckles. The L-plates on the windscreen alerted other drivers to my inexperience, and they generally gave me a wide berth. Although, with Dad beside me telling me to always “drive 200 metres ahead and 200 metres behind”, neither I nor them were ever in much danger.
I’ve driven that road many, many times since. It’s a nice drive, through farmland, small country towns and the beautiful Fitzgerald Glade. I’m a very happy traveller as I make that journey between the two places that I call home, but there’s nothing quite like a rental car driving at 80km/h and then trying to overtake a tractor on a blind corner to swiftly alter my mood.
There has been a lot of conjecture about foreign drivers getting into trouble on our roads. Keys have been confiscated in citizen arrests, court cases involving foreign drivers have been widely reported upon, calls have been made to confiscate passports until proceedings involving serious crashes can be carried out.
Just this week, a Polish man pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing injury. Two days before the crash that led to his court appearance, he had been ticketed for driving at 142km/h.
There is also a collection of incomplete statistics that suggests foreign drivers aren’t actually involved in that many crashes. Police have rightly pointed out that New Zealanders are behind the wheel in the vast majority of crashes.
The situation is far from black and white, but what is clear is that there is a lot of unsafe driving happening on New Zealand roads.
Anecdotally, I have seen more near-misses involving rental cars than I can count. Though actual crash figures may be on the low side for foreign drivers, I wonder whether that is because Kiwi drivers swerve and brake to avoid collisions. I know I have. I’ve seen my life flash before my eyes a few times, and I’m now instinctively wary of rental cars.
The problem is that you have to get pretty close to a vehicle to be able to tell if it is a rental car, which is why I support the idea of mandating that foreign drivers should have to use T-plates when they drive on our roads.
I know the idea isn’t particularly popular, particularly with tourist operators and rental car and campervan companies, but it’s time to put safety first.
I’ve seen arguments about stigma; about how it would demean foreign drivers to have to be identified by prominent yellow plates. Which I think is ridiculous. A foreign driver who has never driven in New Zealand before is essentially a learner driver. They may have driven for decades in their home countries, but our roads are so different, and — let’s be honest — so terrible, that it takes a while to acclimatise to them. Learner drivers use L-plates to protect themselves and others. There are some learner drivers who are great, and some who are abysmal, but making it immediately clear to other drivers that the person behind the wheel isn’t terribly experienced means that other road users can adapt accordingly.
It puts them on alert should anything out of the ordinary happen.
But plates are only the beginning. Learner drivers are required to study the road code religiously — and pass a test on it — before they are allowed to get behind the wheel of a car. Surely road safety education should be a prerequisite for foreign drivers too? Even a short online course with a test at the end of it would be better than nothing. The AA and the NZ Police have already developed optional resources along those lines. The next step should be to make such training compulsory.
If I were going to drive in a foreign country, I would have no objections to taking a short online course and answering a few questions. In fact, I’d probably feel safer and better equipped to drive according to local rules and conditions when I reached my destination.
I find the idea of heading out on to foreign roads with no idea of the laws and regulations more than a little frightening.
I also occasionally find New Zealand drivers more than a little frightening. With all the media focus on foreign drivers, we shouldn’t forget to look in the mirror (or mirrors) every now and then. As citizens, we’re setting the tone on the road, and we need to do a better job. Because we know better.
For those who don’t, however, it’s time we took a different approach to safeguard tourist and Kiwi drivers. Compulsory training, testing and easily visible identification would make a big difference and prevent the kind of minor heart attack that comes with rounding a corner and finding yourself face-to-face with a car that is most definitely not where it’s supposed to be.
Where else in the world would you be likely to come across sheep crossings, one-way bridges, endless roadworks, long stretches of single carriageways and farmers out for a jaunt in their tractor on main roads? Or drivers who bung a swingset on the roof of a people mover, as someone in South Auckland decided was a good idea in 2016?
Our “she’ll be right, mate” attitude on the roads can take quite some getting used to.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Or at least on the lookout for farm animals and nomadic playgrounds.