Road toll heading in wrong direction
Officials said 400 people would die on New Zealand roads by the year’s end. It’s a number Kiwi drivers are on track to meet.
So far this year, 93 people have died on our roads – 17 more than the same time last year. Kiwi children, adults, pensioners, and tourists make up the grim statistic: 93. That’s 93 lives gone in dozens of crashes. Each crash is followed by the familiar call – now more like white noise – of ‘‘drive to the conditions’’, ‘‘don’t speed’’, ‘‘everyone makes mistakes’’. It seems to change nothing. This year, 400 people are expected to die on the roads.
That’s 100 people per quarter, so 93 means that as we approach the end of March, we’re on target.
If breaking it down to numbers and expectations seems insensitive or coldhearted, ponder this: why, after countless campaigns to reduce deaths on our roads, is the road toll higher now than at the same time last year?
If you need something to make the numbers hit home, look at the faces of some of the most recent car crash victims, Dexter Barham and BurgundyRose Brown, both aged 16; or a 6-year-old in Rangı¯tikei yesterday.
Or hear from Senior Constable Les Andrew, who witnessed a crash that killed a friend.
Our road toll last year was 380. It looks as if the road toll is on the way back up after 2013 saw the lowest number of road deaths in 63 years.
At the start of 2018, AA motoring affairs general manager Mike Noon said things wouldn’t change unless driver attitudes did. The AA thinks a major shift in our collective attitude is needed.
Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of the car review website Dog and Lemon Guide, said in February that if we want to stop having the same conversation over and over again, Kiwis need to get real about addressing the issues.
And that’s all Kiwis, he said, not just the Government and law enforcement.
Maybe small changes like calling the road toll the ‘‘human cost’’ instead would help change perception.
Caroline Perry, director of national road safety charity Brake New Zealand, said language was important when talking about road safety.
‘‘We and many other advocates use the term ‘crash’ rather than ‘accident’,’’ Perry said. ‘‘Because we believe crashes are not chance mishaps, they are preventable and we can stop them.
‘‘We have heard it said that ‘road toll’ suggests that it’s simply the price we pay for our mobility, and that that’s acceptable. No death on the road is acceptable and we must do more to reverse the current increase in road deaths.’’
The police don’t even talk about the road toll, according to assistant commissioner of road policing Sandra Venables.
‘‘We want people to understand the lives lost behind those numbers, and the families and communities who are left devastated and heartbroken by grief and loss,’’ she said.
‘‘We tend to use the word death as that is a true description of what has been lost – a life.’’
If you’ve felt a case of deja vu reading this and hearing about the issue, maybe you’re in the same camp as Stuff journalist Martin van Beynen.
He wrote at the start of the year: ‘‘I’m sick of hearing about the road toll.
‘‘Every year, it’s the same. The graphic images, the worthy media campaigns, the statistics and the comparisons.
‘‘The talk about the cost to the country and the semi-obituaries for the deceased. The completely obvious and banal advice from well meaning authorities and the endless debate about whether it’s our roads, our cars or speed or whatever.
‘‘The worst thing about the monotonous pontificating is that it doesn’t seem to make much difference.
‘‘You have to ask why this is. Is it because the driving message is a bit like all those health warnings about salt and fat and sugar and alcohol? We know, we know, but we ignore them anyway,’’ van Beynen wrote.
Last November, the Government announced $22.5 million in funding to improve road safety.
That would include funding low-cost road safety measures over summer, such as installing median barriers, signs and rumble strips.
But AA road safety spokesman Dylan Thomsen said: ‘‘We still have a lot of people who really see crashes as being something that happens to bad drivers, or people who are almost deserving of what they get.’’
National road policing manager Superintendent Steve Greally agreed the majority of ‘‘road trauma’’ was caused by people making mistakes, but said those mistakes should not be happening.
There were too many instances of people driving too fast for the conditions, not wearing seatbelts, and using cellphones while driving, he said.
‘‘There are so many people flouting that [cellphone] law it’s ridiculous.
‘‘Probably the most gutting part of it is the innocent people [affected]. Unfortunately, at times, they’re the ones being collected in this as well by somebody who just couldn’t care less.’’
There were a small number of drivers who displayed ‘‘pure evil’’ behaviour, such as speeding excessively, driving drunk, and passing dangerously or illegally, Greally said.
‘‘It’s not just careless – it’s deliberate, and evil. We’re always interested in taking those vehicles off the road.’’
Greally acknowledged there were more vehicle kilometres being driven now (up 15 per cent in the past four years), but said decision-making was the main problem.
Venables said any death on the roads was one too many.
‘‘We know there are four main behaviours which contribute to death and injury on our roads and these are what we don’t want to see on our roads.
‘‘So police focus is on addressing these behaviours – people driving too fast for the conditions, people driving impaired, people driving distracted, and people not wearing seatbelts.
‘‘At the end of the day, road safety is everyone’s responsibility.’’
‘‘There are so many people flouting that [cellphone] law it’s ridiculous.’’
National road policing manager Superintendent Steve Greally