Police efforts up toll - shame
Candor Trust

The annual road killing count is now more than 10% up, at 394 versus 360 at the same time last year, this comes atop the Accident Compensation road injury liabilities rising from 1 Billion in 2001 to nearly 7 Billion, midst a sickening non stop crash car derby. It all went haywire when Police signed on to the RAM.

"The tragedy in the above figures - an ignored violent disaster - is directly attributable the the Road Police Resource Allocation Model (a computerised quota tasking kit) being unfit for the alleged purpose," said Candor's Spokeswoman Rachael Ford, today.

Police denied model failure to Candor on Radio NZ a couple of years ago, and more recently refused to debate us on National TV. "It would be hard to defend the indefensible" say Candor. "It might take for people to lie their rellys bodies or ashes on Parliament's or the Commissioners steps, and we think similar to that will occur before long".

New Zealanders and perhaps even Police have become acclimatised to mass road wars. But in less feral countries that prefer to base road safety upon scientific evidence, as regards applying what works not what doesn't, the deaths as well as injuries are reducing at phenomenal rates - to the point a near zero road toll is well able to be envisaged.

Sadly, this does not seem to be the National Road Safety Committee's, or Police's wish for New Zealanders. They've instead been plotting out on graphs how many deaths the policy they are prepared to fund will produce.
The graphs proven current interventions non-predictive (and may work in reverse with more enforcement producing more death) in several reviews.

Which reflects that Police's initial concerns about basic incompetency of the speed and alcohol ticket model expressed in correspondence to the MoT are home to roost - but this does not phase them or the Ministry of Transport from making out they know what they're doing, apparently.

The Trust argues that articles such as "Police vow to hunt down festive season drink drivers" (NZ Herald, 7 December) reflect an insipid scientifically contra-indicated advertising based approach, one that only worsen the situation.

There is an autistic focus on alcohol, Police were blabbing on in an alleged road safety promotion about catching a drunk driving mother who was heading home to breast feed. How does this relate to road safety?

And how does nattering on about the fact a few more women are being picked up relative to men? It is a well known fact that women only have roughly half the crash risk at any given alcohol level, so they are not where the focus should be.

Any money spent on a female drink driving campaign to appease feminists in the Temperance League will be money wasted, as it ought to be directed at an education and enforcement campaign against young male drug and ypoung maler drink/drug drivers - this is what hammered Australia's toll.

The Government has been warned against this "finger shaking at the drunks" approach, backed up with "silly season penalties," by many submitters to the Safer Journeys consultation. There's no denying the approach qualifies as highly eccentric, in failing to incorporate a major cause of drink related crashes - that being drug use which ups the odds of a drinker crashing manifold.

While drink driving is like skating on thin ice, piss-pot driving is like pouring gallons of hot water on that thin ice as you go!

This is why drink drive crashes aren't reducing in proportion to reduced drink drive numbers. Drink driver numbers on the road have halved in the last few years but the team is still scoring serious crashes nearly as often as when the ranks were swelled.

Drugs are now aboard and the New Zealand Police in only arresting 300 a year (per quotas) are powerless to reduce drink drive harm - that would take 4000 drug driving busts.

No other "civilised" country still runs a sole drink drive Xmas campaign. They run drink and drug ones - anything less is gross negligence. Yet the New Zealand Government persists with this approach - in an apparent effort to preserve New Zealand as a control group for current Australian studies in drug driving prevention.

A drink drive campaign in 2009, 5 years after most countries began to run combined drink/drug ones is like running an antismoking campaign that only emphasises Rothmans brand cigarettes, or an obesity campaign that only hypes the perils of fish and chips, but never has chocolate on the menu.

As Australia's scientific approach contributes to them having half of Kiwis odds of a crash death, the Trust has placed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission about the grisly New Zealand Road Safety experiment.

Persistence with use of a model disproven by both internal reviews, an ACC solvency problem and mass blood letting has to breach the Bill of Rights.

The real cost of unabated trauma in NZ's crash car derby
ACC Motor Vehicle Account (present value of the future claims liability)

2001 - $1,746,000,000
2002 - $1,987,000,000
2003 - $2,487,000,000
2004 - $2,589,000,000
2005 - $3,237,000,000
2006 - $3,553,000,000
2007 - $3,964,000,000
2008 - $5,079,573,000 Doubled from 2004 - 2008 !!
2009 - $6,845,108,000 Trebled since 2002

ENDS

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