Connecting New Zealand – Road safety
Last updated on
21/02/2012 11:07 a.m.
The government is implementing the Safer Journeys road safety strategy and is making a major financial investment in road safety. This is to both deliver a sustained reduction in deaths and serious injuries on our roads over time, and to reduce the $3.7 billion annual social cost of road accidents.
On this page:
New Zealand has made good progress in reducing the road toll, more than halving the number of road deaths since the early 1970s (Figure 24).
However, despite that improvement, our road death rate remains one of the highest in the OECD (Figure 25).
The carnage on our roads has a significant economic impact — the total social cost of motor vehicle injury crashes in 2009 is estimated at approximately $3.7 billion. This includes $1.38 billion for fatalities, $1.53 billion for serious injuries, and $0.76 billion for minor injuries.
Young drivers between 15 to 19 years of age are over-represented in all types of crashes. While they make up 6 percent of all licensed car drivers, they account for 14 percent of minor injury crashes, 15 percent of serious injury crashes and 12 percent of fatal crashes.
The government is committed to delivering a safer transport system for all New Zealanders. Road safety is a priority because of the numbers of deaths and injuries we suffer each year. The government released the Safer Journeys road safety strategy in March 2010. Safer Journeys and its associated action plan sets out the government’s comprehensive approach to improving safety on our roads over the next decade, and the government’s vision for ‘a safe road system that is increasingly free of serious injury and death’. We want to see a sustained reduction in deaths and serious injuries on our roads over time.
Safer Journeys is based on a new Safe System approach to road safety in New Zealand (Figure 26). The Safe System approach means we need to work across all elements of the road system — roads and roadsides, speeds, vehicles, and road users — to reduce the likelihood of crashes occurring, and to minimise the consequences of crashes that do happen.
The total government investment available to improve road safety under the GPS 2012 is $540 to $700 million per year from 2012/13.
The government will work to improve our roads so that each type of road will eventually have a recognisable and distinctive set of self-explaining features such as signage, lane width, road markings and speed limits. This work will ensure roads are predictable, so that road users can expect particular safety features on each type of road. This should encourage people to travel at speeds that best fit the design and function of the road.
The government will also work to make roads forgiving, so that they help to reduce the consequences of those crashes that do occur. We will do this through installing median barriers and removing or protecting roadside objects in known black spot areas.
A Safe System manages the forces of a crash to a level that the human body can tolerate without serious injury. The impact of a crash depends on the conditions of the road, the vehicle, the vulnerability of the road user and the travel speed. Small reductions in speeds greatly reduce the likelihood of a crash and increase the chances of surviving crashes that do occur. Our long-term goal is a significant reduction in speed-related crashes. The government will initiate a range of actions including ensuring the uptake of effective safe speed limits in high-risk urban and rural areas.
A Safe System means we have a vehicle fleet where all of the cars, vans, motorcycles, buses and trucks have the latest proven vehicle safety technologies. Overseas manufacturers, importers and dealers have an important role to play in providing safe vehicles to the market at an affordable price.
Under a Safe System where everyone has a responsibility for road safety, proven safety features should not be offered as optional extras or sacrificed for performance and appearance. Workplaces also have a responsibility to provide safe vehicles for their employees. This links with the government’s Workplace Health and Safety Strategy for New Zealand to 2015, which has workplace vehicles as one of its eight national priorities.
A Safe System assumes that even responsible road users will sometimes make mistakes. However, this does not mean that road users have no role to play in improving road safety. A Safe System demands safe and responsible road use, so reducing unsafe behaviour is crucial. Responsible users are competent, alert, comply with the road rules and are unimpaired by alcohol, drugs, distraction or fatigue. They take steps to improve their own safety and the safety of others. As citizens they demand and expect safety improvements, for example from vehicle manufacturers and road controlling authorities.
A Safe System assumes road users receive adequate information and education so they understand how to be a responsible road user.
The government will initiate a range of actions, including:
- making the restricted licence test more difficult, to encourage 120 hours of supervised driving practice
- strengthening the theory, basic handling and restricted licence test for motorcyclists
- implementing an alcohol interlock programme
- developing education and enforcement programmes for use with communities at risk (regions, ethnic groups and age groups)
- collecting data on drivers with a blood alcohol concentration between 0.05 and 0.08 for further decision making by government
- implementing a zero blood alcohol concentration for drivers under 20 years of age
The action plan sets out a range of actions that will be undertaken to progress the focus areas. Further action plans will be prepared and released to cover the years 2013 to 2020.
<< Maritime transport | Connecting New Zealand main page