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Home / The Listener / New Zealand


HORROR HIGHWAYS: NZ ROAD DEATHS SURPASS OECD RATES SO WHY IS THE GOVT REVERSING
SAFETY PLANS?

By Greg Dixon
New Zealand Listener·
24 Mar, 2024 12:00 PM17 mins to read

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The only thing I remember is the bright lights as they came towards me. It was
after 10 on a wet, good-for-nothing night in the winter of 1989, and I was
driving home from my part-time job in Auckland’s St Heliers when I rounded a
curve in the road, saw the lights right in front me and …

When I regained consciousness I couldn’t see for the blood in my eyes. Or quite
think where I was. But a voice I didn’t know was talking to me. Who should they
call, it asked? Could I give them a number? I managed my girlfriend’s and my
parents’ and …

When I came to again, I was in an ambulance, its siren blaring my bad news. I
still could not see; there was pain; I was panicking. “What’s happening,” I
asked the paramedics, “what’s happening?”

I had been in a car accident. I was on my way to Auckland Hospital. I would be
okay.

But I was not okay, and it had been no accident. I had been hit head-on by a
drunk driver. He had crossed the centre line. I’d been keeping my speed down in
the rain; he had not. My car was a write-off, and so, for many months after, was
my face.

Glass had ripped open the flesh on my cheek and forehead, leaving slivers
embedded around my right eye. I had been lucky not to lose it, the plastic
surgeon told me, but the injuries left me with angry, red scars around my right
eye and nose and surgical metal in my face.

So I was not okay, though in the most important way, I was. Although I was among
the nearly 16,000 people injured and maimed on our roads in 1989, I had not
joined the dead. And there were many. By the time the year was done, 755 people
had been killed on the roads – two people every day – making it one of the worst
years in our history. In 1989, we lost around 22 people out every 100,000 on our
roads, making them little better than killing fields.

Dishearteningly, 35 years after my accident they largely still are, with around
seven out of every 100,000 dying on the roads. Despite all the safety features
of modern cars, all the road improvements, policing and awareness campaigns, and
all the stories like this one, we are still dying at a rate significantly higher
than almost every other advanced country.

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But perhaps the most depressing fact is this: after decades of a slow decline
from the peak in the 1970s, road deaths have not been going down for the past 10
years, but up, apart from during the Covid pandemic. The obvious question is how
do we fix it?




DENYING THE EVIDENCE

It was called The Road to Zero and until three months ago, it was supposed to be
the answer. Developed in the first term of the Ardern Labour-led government, it
was a 10-year, “evidence-based” strategy that aimed to be the beginning of the
end of the carnage.

Based on an international movement called Vision Zero, which produced
significant decreases in road deaths and injury in Sweden, New York and parts of
Australia, Road to Zero had a different philosophy from previous toll-reduction
efforts.

Taking as its starting point overseas research showing that only about 30% of
serious crashes involve deliberate rule-breaking or risk-taking – such as
intentional speeding and drink driving – Road to Zero was based on the belief
that the big problem is not the usual suspects: bad drivers, careless cyclists
or distracted pedestrians. It is the fault of an “unforgiving system” not taking
into account that people sometimes make mistakes. Under Road to Zero, it was
important not just to ask “why did that person crash?” but “why was that person
killed or seriously injured in that crash?”

With five areas of focus, including speed-limit reductions and adding median
barriers to dangerous roads, Road to Zero launched with an ambitious target:
reducing road deaths and injuries by 40% (from 2018 levels) between 2020 and
2030.

It seems hard to criticise aspirations to save around 750 people from death and
5600 from seriously injury, but attitudes to the strategy, particularly to
lowering speed limits, were mixed.

Former Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency national traffic and safety manager
Fergus Tate tells the Listener Road to Zero, with which he had some involvement,
was based on an “internationally acclaimed and widely adopted approach” adapted
for the New Zealand situation through consultation with more than 100 transport
sector representatives. It gave New Zealand a “world-leading road safety
approach” and other countries are now following in our footsteps, he says.

However, AA road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen and long-time road-safety
campaigner and Dog and Lemon Guide publisher Clive Matthew-Wilson believe Road
to Zero had issues.

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Car expert Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of the car buyers' Dog & Lemon Guide 17
February 2023. New Zealand Herald photograph by Jason Oxenham.

Thomsen says in hindsight it wasn’t well enough thought out and remained “vague
and unclear” in how it would reach its 2030 target. While speed-limit changes
can make “a big, big difference” in terms of safety, he says they “need to suit
the look and feel” of a road. “If they don’t make sense to people then you can
end up with a situation where most people just drive above the speed limit most
of the time.”

Matthew-Wilson believes Road to Zero was too focused on changing behaviour –
“which never works” – and with the Greens’ Julie Anne Genter as associate
transport minister for road safety at the time it was developed, the strategy
was too driven by that party’s agenda.

“[The Greens] saw this as an opportunity to reduce car dependency,” he says. “As
a result, the emphasis of Road to Zero was speed reduction rather than road
improvement.”

To prove it was the right approach, Road to Zero needed to start meeting its
goals. But by December 2022, it was clear it wasn’t. Waka Kotahi acknowledged
that a 40% reduction in death and injury by 2030 was not now achievable. As
well, the rollout of median barriers was slower than planned. Worse, road
deaths, after dropping a little during the years affected by Covid-19 lockdowns,
rose again in 2022.

By last year, although some progress had been made on the introduction of rules,
such as requiring new motorcycles over 125cc to have anti-lock braking systems,
it was clear the nascent strategy was struggling, particularly on road-safety
infrastructure. Of about 500km of new median barriers planned by this year, less
than half have been built.

Clearly, Road to Zero was going to need more time if it was to succeed as
similar strategies have overseas. But all hope of that ended with the change of
government.

Under the last government’s Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits, speed
limits were lowered around parts of the country, with some open roads from
100km/h to 80. Photo / Getty Images


SLOW AHEAD

Central to Road to Zero’s death was the focus on speed-limit reductions, the
strategy’s philosophy being, as an old road safety campaign put it, the faster
you go, the bigger the mess. When Road to Zero was launched in late 2019, about
87% of speed limits were deemed inappropriate for the conditions of the roads.
Reducing speed limits on some roads was “one of the most efficient and immediate
things we could do to reduce trauma”, the strategy argued.

The principal instrument for this was the last government’s Land Transport Rule:
Setting of Speed Limits, which took effect last May. Local councils and Waka
Kotahi were required to develop speed management plans, leading to an eventual
rollout of lower speed limits around parts of the country, with some urban roads
planned to go from 50km/h to 30, and some open roads from 100km/h to 80.

However, while dropping limits near schools was uncontroversial, cuts to speed
elsewhere proved unpopular with many drivers, or at least the vocal ones. In
hindsight, it’s clear those implementing speed-limit drops struggled to sell the
idea.

“The sense of trying to ‘sell’ an idea to the public may well have been part of
the problem,” Thomsen says. “I have certainly heard complaints from many people
around the country that councils and authorities had already made up their mind
when they were consulting and wouldn’t change them regardless of what the public
said.”

This explains all the anger from social media posters, letter writers, talkback
callers and even mayors who all got stuck into the apparent madness of lowering
limits.

In Wairarapa, the lowering of the SH2 limit between Masterton and Featherston to
80km/h caused Carterton Mayor Ron Mark to have conniptions. “These idiots think
speed is the problem,” he told a local paper in January last year. “Grow up.
There were only two fatal crashes last year in Wairarapa where speed was the
cause.”

And then there was the trucking industry, which Matthew-Wilson says has strong
links to National and Act. Nick Leggett, head of trucking industry lobby group
Transporting NZ, told the New Zealand Herald early last year that lower speed
limits “would slow New Zealanders and the economy down” and Waka Kotahi “needed
to focus more attention on fixing roads and installing safety infrastructure”.


IDEOLOGICAL DRIVER

It was little wonder that National saw speed limits as an ideological wedge
issue and an easy vote winner going into the election. Speed wasn’t the issue,
the party argued; drunk drivers, not enough police enforcement and bad road
surfaces were bigger problems.

In September, National announced it would clear a path for a reversal of speed
reductions if it became the government. Echoing trucking industry rhetoric,
then-transport spokesman Simeon Brown effectively politicised speed limits,
claiming that “under the guise of safety, Labour has exposed its anti-car
ideology by slowing down New Zealanders going about their daily lives”.

Brown also claimed the strategy created “blanket speed-limit reductions”,
though, in reality, most roads would remain untouched. “‘Blanket’ was a
convenient buzzword,” Tate says. “Road to Zero was targeting approximately
10,000km of roads and streets for speed-limit changing where it was uneconomic
for infrastructure investment [to make them safer]. That was less than 10% of
the total transport network.”

Simeon Brown, Minister of Transport, announced the reversal of “blanket
approach” to speeds which, he said, “ignored economic impacts and the views of
road users and local communities”. Photo / Supplied

National’s insinuation that lower speed limits would dramatically slow New
Zealanders down was also an exaggeration. It takes less than 10 minutes longer
to cover 100km at 80km/h than driving at 100km/h for cars, and even less for
trucks (heavy vehicles have a speed limit of 90km/h). However, the safety
difference is huge.

According to analysis of New Zealand crash data from 2015-19, the number of
people killed or seriously injured per crash on a road with a speed limit of
100km/h is 40% higher than in crashes on 80km/h roads. Dropping urban speed from
50km/h to 30km/h improves a pedestrian or cyclist’s chance of survival in a
crash by 90%.

Yet reversing Road to Zero speed drops became a big priority for National all
the same – it was No 14 on the coalition’s 100-day action plan and was among the
first to be ticked off. Just 18 days after the coalition deals were signed,
Brown, now Minister of Transport, announced the reversal of the “blanket
approach” to speeds which, he said, “ignored economic impacts and the views of
road users and local communities”.

Instead, a new transport rule would be written, creating a transport system that
“boosts productivity and economic growth and allows New Zealanders to get to
where they want to go, faster and safer”.


RIGHT TURN AHEAD

New Zealand now needs a new road safety strategy, fast. And it will have one by
July.

Early this month, Brown released the coalition’s draft government policy
statement (GPS) on land transport which says it will spend about $7 billion a
year over three years on roading, with much hoopla around the plan centring on
building new “roads of national significance”, while spending up to $4.8 billion
on fixing potholes.

On safety, the GPS leans heavily into more road policing (including more
roadside breath testing and targeting recidivist drunk drivers), hiking fines
and penalties, bringing in roadside drug testing (something the Labour
government failed to complete) and continuing the installation of “low-cost”
road infrastructure such as rumble strips.

It is unclear from the GPS whether the highly effective, but much more
expensive, median barrier rollout planned under Road to Zero will continue.

The document’s key safety focus is catching drunk and drugged drivers because,
it says, alcohol and drugs are “the leading contributors to fatal crashes”.

This is undeniably true, and in the past 10 years, road deaths involving alcohol
and drugs have risen. But focusing on deaths alone fails to tell the full story.
Alcohol and drugs were implicated in 163 fatal crashes in 2022 (confirmed
figures are not yet available for 2023), compared with 104 deaths involving
speed. However, when serious injury is considered, speed was involved in more
than three times as many crashes as alcohol and drugs.

In 2022, 459 serious-injury crashes were attributed to speed, while 144 were
attributed to drugs and alcohol. In Auckland last year, 68% of serious crashes
involved speed, while alcohol and drugs contributed to 34%.

And it may also be that official figures underplay speed’s lethal effect. A
study co-published in 2022 in the Journal of Road Safety by New Zealand
researcher Colin Brodie found that speed was “substantially underestimated” as a
factor in serious road crashes, and speed could be involved in about 60% of
fatal crashes – meaning speed kills more people a year in New Zealand than
homicide.



It should be remembered, too, that international research suggests about 70% of
serious injury crashes result from mistakes by usually careful, law-abiding
drivers.

No matter. The GPS makes it clear any speed-limit reductions made under Road to
Zero can now be reversed “where it is safe to do so”, with posted speed limits
to be determined by a “benefit-cost analysis”.

This means if the estimated dollar value of the “economic cost” for a lower
speed limit is shown to be higher than the estimated dollar “cost” of death and
injury through crashes, economics wins and the speed limit goes back up. In
plain English, it means profit is more important than lower speed limits to
prevent death and injury.

“There’s a lot of rhetoric about how [lower speed limits] are going to cripple
the economy,” Tate says. “I struggle with the idea that you could improve the
economy while putting people’s lives in danger.”

Indeed, Claes Tingvall, the Swede who helped create the Vision Zero strategy on
which Road to Zero was based, called it “immoral” to trade people’s safety for
economic benefits. “I suspect he’s right,” Tate says. “I think it is effectively
immoral.”


BARRIERS TO FEWER DEATHS

Improving road safety is an immensely complex business with many interlocking
parts, including policing, vehicle safety, appropriate speed management,
improving the safety infrastructure on roads, driver education, cameras,
penalties, along with myriad other factors. It’s also a matter of how these
elements are brought together, and opinions differ on that.

Each of the road safety experts the Listener spoke to for this story placed
different emphasis on some of those areas and favoured some solutions over
others (though all agreed that such road safety infrastructure as median
barriers demonstrably works).

But in the end, the new government sets the priorities. The AA’s Thomsen says
there are “lots of good things” in the GPS, including a focus on more police on
the roads, more alcohol testing, better maintenance and resurfacing roads. “The
key challenge the government will have is to deliver real progress and results
in the years ahead.”

Fire Service, Police, and St John Ambulance responded to a serious crash
occurred at the intersection of Bond Street and New North Road in Kingsland.
Photo / NZME

Tate says that, while the new roads and bypasses planned will undeniably
contribute to safety, these are the most expensive way to save lives and prevent
injury, and are less efficient than low-cost solutions. “The increase in focus
on maintenance is great from a safety perspective, but the fixation on potholes
as a safety issue is frustrating,” he says. “The biggest maintenance safety
issue is typically skidding resistance, not potholes.”

Matthew-Wilson says the pressure to build new roads is mostly coming from
property developers and the trucking industry. “Building new roads instead of
properly fixing old ones will produce a handful of safer highways at the expense
of the rest of the roading network. The same money could have been used to fit
median barriers and roadside fencing on a large percentage of high-risk roads
around the country.”


TOLL ALL THAT COUNTS

There are two glaring omissions in the GPS. One is any mention of setting new
targets on lowering road deaths and injuries, suggesting PM Christopher Luxon’s
result-oriented government has no ambition on these, or it doesn’t have the
courage to set targets that could be missed. The other omission is what to do
about our famously cavalier attitudes on the roads.

In terms of the latter, New Zealand drivers tend to suffer from a sense that
they are the only ones on the road. “European drivers grow up knowing they’re
sharing the roads with millions of others,” says Matthew-Wilson. “Kiwi drivers
still expect the road to be free of obstructions such as other motorists.”

The other major problem is that, unlike me and others who have experienced a
serious car crash, few Kiwis think road death or serious injury could happen to
them.

Tate says, “For so many of the public, they don’t know anybody [who’s had a
serious car accident], and they don’t actually see the risk actually exists. So
[with lower speed limits] we were putting in a solution that from many people’s
point of view is a solution to a non-existent risk.”

Superintendent Steve Greally, the director of the National Road Policing Centre,
says one of the biggest takeaways on driver psychology is that people fear
penalties more than they fear our roads. “That’s because they fundamentally
don’t ever believe they will die on our roads but they do think they’ll be
caught.”

So National’s new strategy looks well targeted on policing, higher fines and
penalties and a greater emphasis on catching drunk and drugged drivers.

However, any progress towards the internationally proven strategy of targeted
speed-limit reductions is now in the rear-view mirror. That’s a decision that
will be judged by the only measure of road safety that matters, and that’s not
profits for trucking companies, how many potholes are fixed or how many new
roads are built.

Road fatalities.


SWEDISH WAY

While the country awaits the new government to finalise its road safety plans,
we should consider what manifestly worked in Sweden, a country with a proven
record of lowering its road toll from the highs of the 1970s to one of the
lowest in the world today; a country that had almost half the number of road
deaths as New Zealand in 2022, despite having twice the population and a larger
roading network.

Its solutions didn’t prioritise profit. Starting from 1997, the Swedish
government made detailed analysis and planning the keys to reducing road trauma.
Roads were built or altered to prioritise safety over speed and convenience,
according to the Economist. Speed limits were lowered, median barriers and
barriers to protect cyclists were built. As well, hundreds of kilometres of
so-called “2+1″ roads were added so that a passing lane alternated between
traffic directions (this saved about 145 lives in the first decade). Strict
policing helped, as did many thousands of safer pedestrian crossings.

The result is that Sweden, which continues to aim for zero deaths, now loses
just 2.17 people out of every 100,000 on its roads. New Zealand, meanwhile, lost
7.3 in 2022. Has somebody told the new minister for transport?


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