Keeping New Zealanders Moving
3.1 Transport Safety - A Tolerable Level of Pain and Grief ?
There is no transport mode as significant in causing pain and suffering as land transport. The New Zealand Land Transport Safety Strategy to 2010 was formulated in 2001 and aspired to achieve British levels of transport safety by the end of the decade. Despite the low road toll of 2008 this is highly unlikely to occur. In fact we are likely to kill 100 more people than the target and hospitalise 5,000 more. The social cost of this is estimated at $4.5 billion. The state-of-the-art thinking in transport safety comes from Sweden where it is maintained that it is not ethical to countenance killing anyone at all with a Government run system. The Swedes lead the world with the notion of a “failsafe” land transport system whereby even in the event of human error the system reduces the consequences from catastrophy to educational experience. The safe system is based on the concept of “safer drivers in safer cars on safer roads”. Engineers in both Sweden and Japan have made significant strides in improving vehicle safety characteristics and road design. The AA supports this approach through ANCAP car safety standards and KiwiRAP road assessment. By contrast New Zealand’s approach has been enforcement, spending $250 million a year on road traffic policing to issue between $160 and $180 million worth of fines of which, on average, $110 million is collected. Compliance levels on speed and seat-belts average 90% but there has been a slight rise in alcohol non-compliance after significant gains since the 1980s. Despite this Duignan found that most of the road safety performance improvement over the past decade were attributable to safer automotive designs. This is not to denigrate Police efforts but to simply point out that Police are not generally present to prevent crashes - they deal with the consequences. The largest and most expensive group in our crash statistics are young people. While many decry our young driving age research shows that young people driving under adult supervision are in fact among the safest drivers on the road. Extending the period of supervision and changing the emphasis from skills training to judgement education are all part of the proposals for change to the Graduated Driver License Scheme, endorsed by the AA. There is evidence that driver education programmes can mitigate for the lack of frontal lobe development in drivers under 25.
Graduated Driver Licence System
Alcolocks
Hazards
Rumblestrips
SWATT 2010 proved that “Rumblestrips” are an inexpensive way to greatly reduce our most common crash type.
Cell phones Repeat drink-drivers Waikato University are addicts and cannot research has confirmed be trusted to exercise crash risk increase from judgement. Alcolocks and the use of a cell phone compulsory treatment while driving is similar are all needed to break to alcohol consumption. through the deadly habit While a ban on handhelds which causes as much is a start, education is the havoc on roads as off. only lasting solution. If the pole had been frangible this man would not be fighting for his life. In the United States a collision with roadside furniture would see the utility sued. Here the pole will be replaced, and the ACC will pick up the pieces. While exemplary in many ways the flaw of the ACC “no fault” legislation is that it shields organisations who could do more to protect the public. The public is largely unaware of the number and danger of roadside hazards close by state highways and local roads. The AA in conjunction with NZTA has begun a road safety auditing process called KiwiRAP (Kiwi Road Assessment Programme) to improve this. Median barriers
Low cost wire-rope median barriers stop collisions. They have stopped trucks while Monash found no extra risk to motorcyclists.
Right-hand rule
ESC
Adopting international standards for driving rules, as well as signs helps reduce confusion as the driving public becomes international.
Electronic Stability Control measurably improves crash avoidance. While expensive it is a lifesaver. 13
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