Govt ignores visitor drivers’ toll

Individuals and families have suffered terribly but petitions calling for reform are rejected.

I’ve never been any good at traditional sports. I did try out for the school tennis team (never heard back) and once joined the women’s basketball team to make some friends in the tiny outback town where I was working (never touched the ball. Not once. All season. What a loser).

I have ridden and owned horses since the age of six, though, and that’s the only place I can claim any prowess. My last horse was completely loopy and was constantly plotting for us to part ways; he was also one of the largest riding horses in the country. He had incredible strength and all the bravery of a baby mouse. Riding him was a roll of the dice, every time.

Our most hair-raising moments together, when the dangers of the world outside the paddock meshed with my horse’s extreme paranoia, always came out on the road. Horses and riders have similar rights and responsibilities on New Zealand roads as drivers and cyclists do and most of the time, drivers slow down, move over, and generally act with courtesy. I kept my horse well clear of the asphalt itself but I’d like to thank all those drivers over the years who, on seeing a monstrous idiot plunging about on the grass verge with me on top clinging on for dear life, gave me a very wide berth.

My long-time colleague, television journalist Karen Rutherford, was not so lucky. Six months ago she was riding along a rural road near her home north of Auckland with her 13-year-old daughter Ella. They were riding single file in hi-vis vests, and expected that the car roaring towards them would slow down. In the driver’s upcoming trial, the Crown will allege Karen was hit and catapulted into the car’s windscreen, before landing in a ditch.

Ella was not hurt, but her horse George died from horrendous injures.

The driver is a foreign national who will face court next month charged with careless driving causing injury, and so a lot of the detail of the case is suppressed right now. But other details are not; Karen’s injuries meant she struggled to leave the house for more than three months.

Along with her job at Newshub, Karen is now an advocate for tougher rules for visiting drivers in New Zealand. When she talks about it, she notes something others often leave out; as well as the 22 who lost their lives to fatal mistakes made by inexperienced visiting drivers on our roads last year, more than 700 were injured.

Families who’ve lost their loved ones have tried again and again in recent years to get the Government to agree to some kind of compulsory checks for visitors. Brothers Sean and Cody Roberts were just 10 and 9 when they brought the signatures of 31,000 Kiwis to Parliament in 2014, after their father was killed by a Chinese national who’d been in the country less than two days. Their petition was turned down.

This week Karen helped Judy Richards, whose son Rhys Middleton was killed, present a new petition to Parliament. Judy had worked hard on a compromise which asked for compulsory testing after three months. Again, the petition was dismissed.

I spoke to the Associate Minister for Transport, David Bennett, about the issue this week. I’ll be kind here and just say it was not a very coherent performance by the minister. Bennett seemed acutely uncomfortable with the subject matter and, asked repeatedly what we are doing to address the issue of visiting drivers, talked vaguely about ‘‘pamphlets’’. It’s plain the multi-agency Visiting Drivers Project has some good materials and innovative ideas. Some car rental companies are doing good work promoting the measures. But it’s all voluntary.

Meanwhile there have been four serious accidents in the past two weeks involving visiting drivers. While on the one hand we’re told visiting drivers are responsible for only a few road deaths (there’s still those 700 injuries) we’re also hearing that visitor numbers are surging and likely to hit 4 million per annum soon.

I asked Karen Rutherford what she thought was stopping the Government doing more. It is plainly worried about the reaction of other countries to any kind of compulsory regime. Is there more?

‘‘I don’t think a minister has yet lost a loved one this way. Sadly until they’re struck down, or one of their family is, I don’t think they’ll get it. What they don’t realise is, scores of people who’ve signed (Judy’s) petition are in fact visitors or new immigrants who say they’d welcome better education so they themselves feel safe.’’