Safer Journeys action plan - progress in improving road safety

This page looks at the progress made so far in improving road safety, and how the Safer Journeys action plan will monitor future progress.

Although responsibility for each action has been assigned to specific agencies, progress against those actions will be monitored by the NRSC. The key indicator of success will be the reduction of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. This will be monitored continuously by partner agencies. Other key indicators, as outlined at the back of the action plan, will also be monitored to ensure that the actions are having the desired effect.  

Progress in reducing road deaths and serious injuries has slowed in recent years. Since 2000, road deaths have fluctuated between a high of 490 and a low of 358. In 2010, there were 375 road deaths. This is only slightly less than the number of deaths in 2009 (385).

The overall trend is downwards. Over the last 10 years we have achieved an annual average reduction in road deaths of 1.8 percent.

Given the Safer Journeys’ vision of a ‘safe road system increasingly free of death and serious injury’, we need to do much better than this.

Looking to the 1990s, where an annual average reduction in road deaths of 4.3 percent was achieved, we can see that we have been able to do better in the past.

If we achieved the same proportional reduction over the next decade, as we have in the last, we would have a road toll of around 310 by 2020. If we are able to achieve a similar proportional reduction to what we did in the 1990s, we could get down to 240 deaths by 2020.

Similarly, progress in reducing the number of crashes resulting in serious injuries has also stalled. In fact, the number of serious injuries^[1] over the last decade has increased on average by two percent per year. At the very least we need to reverse this trend.

Six-monthly updates to the NRSC will be provided by the Ministry of Transport. The NRSC will in turn report to the Minister of Transport every 6 months. A consolidated progress report against the action plan will be published each year.

Overall indicators for monitoring

• People killed in road crashes.
• People seriously injured in road crashes, as defined by NZIPS^[2].
• People hospitalised for over 1 day.
• People seriously injured, as recorded by Police.
• ACC entitlement claims.

Indicators to track our progress towards embedding a Safe System have yet to be developed.