This was the worst January for crash fatalities in five years. Why isn’t the Road to Zero strategy making any apparent impact on the road toll, asks Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
After a bad Christmas, an even worse January
It’s been a horrendous month on New Zealand’s roads. The provisional roll toll for January is 36, having increased by two yesterday following a fiery pre-dawn collision that killed both drivers in south Taranaki. This was the worst January for road deaths in five years, weeks after the Christmas holiday period ended with a provisional road toll of 21. That number was on par with last year’s Christmas period, the worst since 2017. Yesterday’s fatalities in Taranaki followed two crashes earlier this week in Oamaru and north Canterbury, killing four. The road toll for 2023 was 341 – an improvement on 2022, but still almost one road death for every day of the year.
Is Road to Zero a failure?
The latest figures are likely to reanimate the ongoing debate about Waka Kotahi’s Road to Zero programme. The road safety strategy was launched in January 2020 with a goal of reducing road deaths to zero by 2050, and by 40% in its first decade, based on 2018’s benchmark of 378 deaths. So how is the strategy doing so far? Terribly, says Press columnist Mike Yardley. “Despite lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars on infantilising advertising campaigns [and] lowering speed limits on hundreds of roads… the promised fatality reductions are not transpiring.” In August Newsroom reported that the government seemed to be backing away from the Road to Zero targets, noting that its overarching land transport safety goal had changed from 2021’s “develop a transport system where no one is killed or seriously injured” to the markedly less ambitious “transport is made substantially safer for all” in 2024.
New government targeting drink and drugs, not speed
The new government also has its doubts about Road to Zero. Under the strategy’s Tackling Unsafe Speeds programme, rules to make it easier for councils to reduce speed limits came into effect in May – only to be reversed by the new government last month. Transport minister Simeon Brown said the government would come up with a new rule “to ensure that when speed limits are set, economic impacts – including travel times – and the views of road users and local communities are taken into account, alongside safety”. Brown believes the focus should be not on speed, but on drunk and drugged driving. Roadside drug saliva testing was supposed to come into effect in March 2023, but was put on hold because the government could not procure the devices needed. In August, a further 12-month delay to saliva screening was announced, reports Newsroom’s Emma Hatton, who has done incredible work covering the road safety beat.
‘This is not normal’
High road tolls are a deep-rooted New Zealand phenomenon. “This is not a condition of modern life. It’s not normal. It’s an aberration specific to this country,” writes Simon Wilson in the Herald Premium (paywalled). “In 2016, New Zealand had the third-highest rate of road deaths in the developed world. Only Poland and Greece were worse.” There are many reasons for our road fatality record, including a high rate of car usage, unsafe road design, mobile phones, not wearing seatbelts, fatigue, impaired driving – and, evidence shows, the speed at which we drive. For Wilson, Brown’s speed limit u-turn was curiously timed. “What was the minister’s aim, making this announcement just before the busy holiday season? He cannot be intending to signal to motorists that it’s okay to speed.”