My commute brings home the carnage
As I write, with only another 11 days of the year to go, the road toll stands at 335 deaths. That makes it another bad year for New Zealand roads, but it looks slightly better than 2017 and 2018, with 360 and 359 deaths respectively.
However, 2019 has been a particularly grim year for motorcyclists. Of the 55 killed on a motorbike, 52 were riders and three were riding pillion. In 2018, the combined toll was 49 and in 2017, 45.
Pedestrians have fared better. In 2017, 37 were killed and, in 2018, the toll was 41. This year the number stands at 28 so far.
What is interesting about the road toll is not the variations but how much it stays about the same.
At this stage we already know this year’s toll will be pretty much the same as last year, which was nearly the same as the year before.
You wonder if the country has accepted the cost of motoring convenience, pleasure and freedom is about 350 lives a year and, of course, the countless injuries.
That is not to say the authorities haven’t been trying – nor that they shouldn’t keep trying. In terms of getting the message across, you wonder what else can be done.
Television is saturated with public good messages about the dangers of the roads and coverage of bad accidents by the media is extensive.
Other measures also face hurdles. Stronger policing and better roads will help the road toll, but no-one wants a police state or valuable police time spent on minor infringements.
Better roads take time and money, and New Zealand’s geography can make for difficult driving.
The trouble with road toll figures, public safety notices and the various appeals is fourfold. First, they tend to preach to the converted and miss the audience that most needs to heed the message.
Second, they tend to lose their punch with repetition and with an easily distracted or saturated audience.
Third, they deal in generalities. They can’t portray the causes and responsibilities connected with each fatal accident.
And fourth, they can’t achieve anything like the impact of close experience with road carnage.
All four add up to this – we don’t learn. I have been driving the same semi-rural roads between home and work for the last 30 years or so. With kids grown up, old age creeping closer, and with a lot less to lose I have ironically become a more careful driver.
The trouble with road toll figures, public safety notices and the various appeals is ... they tend to preach to the converted.
Not that I was ever a crazy driver, but my concentration had a tendency to drift off. I once fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the road, broke a telegraph pole, crashed through a fence, rolled the vehicle and escaped without a scratch.
So I’m in no position to lecture anyone on road safety, but that is not going to stop me.
The last few years have been particularly deadly on the 30km stretch of road between home in Diamond Harbour and the outskirts of Christchurch.
Every few kilometres has a reminder. There is the bank that the chef at the local cafe crashed down. The grey block wall that a young man smashed into, losing his life. The white cross marking the spot where a motorcyclist perished, and of course the telegraph pole where I came to grief.
In a couple of years, seven people have lost their lives on my 30km stretch of road, and I can tell you exactly where. Four were motorcycle riders or pillion passengers, one was a motorist and two were passengers in a car.
The passengers, Ashburton teenagers Tayla Alexander, 17, and her sister Sunmara Alexander, 15, were in a car reportedly driven by a 19-year-old man, when it crashed down a bank on November 27.
Tayla died in the crash and Sunmara was critically injured with extensive burns. She died last week on her 16th birthday at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital.
The fatalities leave powerful impressions, but the near misses also stay in the mind. The car that failed to take a corner, went up a two-metre bank and rolled over on to its roof.
The vehicle, obviously borrowed from mum, that ended up on its side in a creek alongside the only straight section of road on the whole 30km.
The motorbike that just managed to correct coming around a corner on the wrong side of the road and into the path of a car.
The surprising thing is not the number of fatalities but that there are not a lot more.
The authorities seem to have taken note. This week speed signs the size of main highway billboards appeared on various sections of the 30km stretch of road.
Over the past year, yellow nopassing lines have appeared and speed restrictions change so often it’s hard to keep track.
I know it won’t make a bit of difference, but if you’re heading out our way in a car or motorbike over the break, just follow two simple words of advice – Don’t hurry.