Road to Zero up against our awful driving habits

The irony has not escaped me that when the catch-cry of the latest traffic safety commercial is ‘Road to Zero’, I sit in my studio at night and hear Geoff Bryan read news bulletins that often start with another serious or fatal crash.

I couldn’t work out if I was simply listening more, being forced in to the position of having to hear the news now

I’m cast for four hours nightly in a radio studio, or if in fact we are taking the proverbial piss out of the Road to Zero campaign. It seems to me, as the campaign churns on, our road toll is mounting drastically. In 2022 so far, 135 people have died on our roads, compared to 112 this time last year.

(Let me add right now, that Bryan is a fine newsreader, and in my opinion the best in the

business. So much so that he manages to make me interested in Lithuanian handball results, and whether Liverpool have beaten Manchester).

With due respect to the folks at whatever agency came up with the commercial, it’s not one of the greats. I’m also fairly sure no commercial would cause a giant shift in our current ‘cowboy’ driving culture.

The fact is that we Kiwis are crap drivers. It’s true. We’re awful. We think we’re the world’s best. We drive like we’re stoned, drunk or trying to catch up to Lewis Hamilton in the final race of the Formula 1 championship.

We are impatient, impolite, arrogant, angry, and inattentive. We turn our heads to talk to passengers, when that’s clearly not necessary unless you’re on the back of a truck filming a scene in a

movie. We use the horn not only to warn of danger, or politely prompt someone who’s daydreaming or turning away to talk to their passenger (massive eye roll) that the light has turned green.

We also feel it necessary to honk at people who offend us by going too slowly, accidentally getting in the wrong lane, or who have in some way interfered with our need to catch up to Lewis Hamilton. We use or horn like an amplified ‘tut tut’ or a terrifyingly loud ‘tsk tsk’.

We go too slowly for kilometres on a one-lane road, and then when we get to the area where others can pass, we speed up to ensure we remain in front, only then to slow back down to 80kph. We ignore yellow lines, we ignore double yellow lines, we assume that passing on corners is just part of our culture, and often use our hazard lights to just double-park anywhere we like. Oh, we most certainly would podium at the ‘worst drivers in the world’ games.

How dare she say that, some people will mutter. How dare I say it? I’ve driven in most states of America, in Europe, and parts of Asia, and nowhere else in the world have I seen that crazy demolition-derby type driving I’ve witnessed here.

Shall I go on?

We drink and drive. We drug and drive. We treat seatbelts like they’re optional. We allow kids to clamber around with no restraints. We find it tiresome to indicate, and the idea of letting anyone into traffic is unthinkable – ‘What if they get ahead of us, and catch up with Lewis Hamilton?’

We text and drive. We take pics and drive, and sometimes we manage the trifecta of drinking, texting and driving. We Kiwis drive angry, we drive passive-aggressively, we drive at whatever speed we like with little regard for any signs that clearly tell us what speed we must drive at. Passing large trucks on dangerous stretches seems to be a bona fide sport.

The best traffic safety campaign I remember was that creepy dude standing by the side of the road spinning the wheel of fortune. It made me change the way I drive. But campaigns that encourage a Road to Zero seem to be having about as much effect as the now entirely meaningless term ‘Be kind’.

Of course we should all behave kindly. It’s simply that the word has lost its potency. Road to Zero might be a little cryptic for some. Perhaps we need some tough talk around our safer driving campaigns. It might be an idea to just yell, ‘‘Youre not as good a driver as you think you are you idiot. Oi! Slow down, get off your effen phone. Put ya seat belt on ya human cannonball, and how about loving your kids enough to belt them in too. Just repeating. YOU’RE A BLOODY TERRIBLE DRIVER! PULL YOUR HEAD IN!’’

Just a thought for the next campaign.

‘We drive like we’re stoned, drunk or trying to catch up to Lewis Hamilton in Formula 1.’