NZ Not Working For a 'Vision Zero' Toll

Candor would like to congratulate Police for the good work this holiday period in an extremely harsh operating context. An increase in drink drive prosecutions of 1000 yearly up to over 29 000 last year shows Police are trying hard with their scarce resources. Even if they are working to meet a quite disgraceful target of 300 human lives dashed on the roads by 2010.

Trust workers firmly believe there is ample evidence though that LTNZ's alleged toll of 373 people (a much lower figure than that recorded by the ACC) is a good 80 fatalities higher than might have been achieved in 2006 – had a road safety policy appropriate for the current century like "Vision Zero" been adopted in the year 2000.

'New Zealanders need to think about this - given the choice (which we do have ) would they want vision zero or vision one or two (current policy) for their whanau or street', says Ed Radley of Candor Trust.

It is unfortunate the phenomenal increase in crash numbers and injuries since 2000 necessitated a voracious recruitmernt drive. North Shore for example had had to pick up 11 extra road Police 'To address an over-delivery of the demand-driven crash attendance and investigation activity', according to a 2006/7 Police Strategy report.

Candor spot checks on main highways over the new year found about a third of drivers running headlights in the day - which hopefully saved lives, and also exemplified the high fear level out there. As most people are perhaps conscious today of how murderous our general roading standard is.

Most New Zealanders do drive safely as Road Police Chief Dave Cliff has been reinforcing so perhaps the Police should have a reward scheme going for observed safe driving like running day lights, and use of hands free mobiles. Candor would like to see a campaign with people getting pulled over and given a merit certificate and some small reward perhaps.

Cliff is correct in saying it is just a minority of incorrigible offenders causing grief and this is a significant point as impaired drivers kill at 3-4 x the murder rate. The 'don't cares' are helping put our roads among the O.E.C.D’s worst rated road danger zones Candor would add. But Candor can’t agree that safety messages need to reach these drivers, because if they haven’t heard by now they won’t.

It is well evidenced that incorrigible traffic offenders do not heed safety arnings – stronger messages like firm consistent penalties delivered with speed are what works with them, as was lately pointed out by the Sensible Sentencing Trust. Our Justice system creates no disincentives for prospective road killers, and often actively encourages them.

An impaired driving charge in Canada would earn an instant 90 day suspension and a years license loss, for second convictions it is 3 years plus 2 weeks jail, a third is lifetime license suspension plus 3 months jail. Candor supports the Sensible Sentencing Trust's call for a similar system.

Another bone of contention being chewed over by many road safety groups in addition to Candor are the Polices repeated assertions that the bulk of the toll is attributable to excess speed as the figures would clearly to anyone caring to investigate show otherwise.

Over the limit speed is according to MOT only a factor in 18% of fatal crashes and excess speed for conditions for a slightly lower figure, that can be added to the first.

But the Police drug driving studies preliminary results support other findings that impaired driving is by far the major toll factor, and likely involved in twice as many fatalities as is speed (also a significant issue nevertheless).

While excess speed is involved in around a third of the road toll impaired driving is shown to be involved in roughly 60% of the toll in some drug riddled Police Districts.

The second most significant toll factor is our roads which Candor estimates could cut New Zealand's toll in half if they were upgraded to 4 or 5 star standard on all Highways carrying traffic volumes above 5000 vehicles per day.

Candor advise people in suburbs with historic low tolls to tell Councils they should return the excess dollars they are given to hump roads and trissy them up with wasteful beautifying projects. As the money spent on Toitoi and aesthetic sculptures could and should be spent better on median barriers on State Highways.

Candor asserts the Police do well know where the problem really lies. As they recently added little black crash books to their kits. Ones dividing each Policing area into stretches of roads and intersections - ones which were assigned risk ratings based on a variety of data including reported crashes.

These books guide RTPP's (Risk targeted patrol plans). They dictate the allocation of strategic enforcement hours to address known safety risks, by location and time. So what we have then is a swarm of Police on unsafe stretches of Road poor things.

Where often enough a simple engineering solution would permanently fix the underlying problem. 'The public really needs a copy of their local crash book so we know where and when not to go. Oz cops apparently have them and are not to patrol in some areas at certain times - for their own safety'.

Enforcement based road safety policy is said by the World Bank Global Traffic Report to be less economic and effective than Engineering based strategies – in the long term the path New Zealand has embarked upon is a lose – lose situation.

The Australians are heavy on enforcement and planning more which explains why they are not making great gains with slashing their toll either. For the last year the road tolls of Queensland, West Australia and Tasmania rose. And in NSW where figures showed a 28 per cent rise in deaths involving P-plate drivers - a similar situation to in New Zealand.

The Australian AA is continuing to be stroppy despite lower tolls than our's and loudly proclaiming the need to turn to more aggressive measures to stop the bloodbath. The Australian AA is an independent advocat so it can push for safer roading - and does so constantly.

Though with several Road Victim Groups lately formed in New Zealand Candor are hoping Kiwi Victims will soon be heard regarding the need for more 'preventive medicine'.

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