Appeal for safe driving on holiday
Traffic volumes across the Haast and Lindis passes show a sharp rise at Labour Weekend as the summer tourist season in the South begins. Mark Price takes a look at two elements of that ever expanding flow of tourist traffic — the motorised majority and th
TOURISTS have no way of escaping the safedriving message this summer. The backs of buses and trucks, roadside billboards, petrol stations and airports, and even toilet walls have been plastered with tips on how tourists should adapt to New Zealand driving conditions.
The project is being run by the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) and director regional relationships for the South Island Jim Harland, said last week it was designed to ensure visitors had a safe and enjoyable holiday experience.
Part of the work between now and March will be to collect tourist data from credit card use, the international visitor survey and facetoface interviews.
Mr Harland said it was hoped hundreds of tourists would be spoken to, some in their native Mandarin, at tourist stops like the entrance to the Homer Tunnel, on the road to Milford Sound.
‘‘The findings will help [NZTA], other government agencies, councils and other providers identify opportunities to improve the transport system from an international visitor perspective.’’
‘‘It’s all part of trying to understand from the users’ point of view what they see, and then we can use that to help target further messages and so on in the future.’’
Previous work has indicated
New Zealand roads are generally what tourists expect, except for state highways where tourists from developed countries have noted the lack of ‘‘divided carriageways’’ and median barriers.
Mr Harland said there had been a lot of effort put into the ‘‘imaging’’ of messages directed towards tourists ‘‘so that people have an expectation that they will find slower roads than what they are used to and more challenging roads’’.
Of tourists coming to New Zealand, 71% are from China, Australia, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States, and Mr Harland said tourists from those countries accounted for about 57% of overseas licence holders involved in crashes.
While the highest number of crashes involving foreign drivers was in Auckland, Westland and the QueenstownLakes region had the highest percentage of crashes involving an overseas driver.
Mr Harland said it was because of those statistics, ‘‘significant’’ safety improvements had been made to roads on the West Coast and in the South, including extra rumble strips, keepleft arrows, and guard rails.
Billboards have also now been placed in the Gibbston valley, Lindis Pass area and north of Alexandra.
The visitor drivers project began in 2014, and an evaluation for ACC and NZTA in May found it had ‘‘substantially delivered’’, noting the number of deaths and serious injuries among visiting drivers had ‘‘remained relatively stable, despite a sustained increase in tourism volumes’’.
Mr Harland said in 1995 there were 27 fatal crashes in New Zealand involving a foreign licence holder and in 2017 the number was 34.
‘‘But in the meantime, we have had more than a doubling of visitor arrivals and if you look at that 34 figure, 23 . . . were involved and not necessarily at fault.’’