Major changes needed to keep soaring road toll in check

Monday, 16 October 2017

Police investigations determined that Armit tried to stop but ended up colliding with Brent James Cooke's car.

OPINION: It's a pretty sobering indictment on the scale of New Zealand's killing fields when police say they will consider it a 'victory' if the year's road fatality count can be kept under 350.

Truth be told, with the toll now nudging 300, it will be a minor miracle if we only lose another 50 lives between now and year's end. No matter which way you cut it, the galloping increase in Kiwis slaughtered on our roads, let alone many thousands marred with serious injuries, is a shameful national horror.

Jesse Shortland, left, and Samantha Shortland died in a head-on crash in Southland. Their two young children survived.

Year on year, the national road toll has jumped 20 per cent, yet even more alarmingly, Canterbury's road fatality count has soared by nearly 70 per cent. Road policing national manager Superintendent Steve Greally is bang on to characterise our roads and highways as a 'battle zone'.

To try and explain away the upswing in road fatalities on population growth would be grossly erroneous – our per capita fatality count is rising sharply, as the Canterbury road toll so tragically and brutally demonstrates.

Road policing national manager Superintendent Steve Greally says NZ's roads and highways are a 'battle zone'.

* Sixty more deaths predicted on NZ roads in already-deadly year

* New 110kmh limits may increase the road toll

* New Zealand's road toll on track for highest total in years**

Greally is right to call for speed limits to be reviewed that more thoughtfully reflect the state of roads. Upping the limit for the likes of Christchurch's Southern Motorway to 110kmh would be welcomed by many, but equally, many Canterbury roads currently governed by a 100kmh limit, are simply not engineered for high speed. The Selwyn district, in particular, is laced with them.

Police also believe the widespread defiance of the driver ban on hand-held cellphone use could present as a factor in up to a quarter of fatalities. Christchurch repeatedly leads the nation in these stakes, with more motorists sprung here for cellphone offences, than any other police district.

But the consequences are piffling. Twenty demerits and an $80 fine is not a deterrent. It's barely befits being called a penalty. It's a trumped up parking fine that needs a serious reboot to ram the message home. The incoming government should confiscate the phones and double the demerits.

Prior to the election, the Automobile Association (AA) released its political wishlist of road safety priorities. It's all the more relevant with the intensifying bloodbath on our roads.

The AA wants much greater focus ramming home the need to wear seatbelts. In 2016, 100 people who died in road crashes weren't wearing one. It is tragic, baffling grand-scale stupidity.

The motoring body is also calling for a national passing and overtaking strategy, with many more passing lanes, to curb tail-gating and roulette-style overtaking. A monstrous elephant in the room that the Government has woefully dragged its heels on is roadside drug testing.

As the AA points out, New Zealand studies have concluded a third drivers in fatal and serious injury crashes had some type of drug in their system – predominantly cannabis. But you're very unlikely to be collared driving off your scone. The police don't even bother probing drug-impairment if the motorist fails a breath-alcohol test.

All Australian states now routinely carry out roadside testing for drink and drugs and some Aussie states are now catching more people for drug-driving than drink-driving. The state of Victoria, which has been at the leading edge of developing a rapid detection regime, continues to enjoy a downward trending road toll, down 16 per cent on this time last year.

The AA is demanding rapid roadside testing be implemented here, along with a 'cocktail offence', whereby drug and alcohol impairment triggers double penalties. They're also challenging the Government to mobilise more red light cameras to high-risk intersections. Christchurch is beset with those impetuous pigs who blithely plough through the reds, habitually and ever more brazenly. Spank them.

Finally, what an earth has gone wrong with the *555 service? On Friday, my father and I both had reason to call *555 about a dangerous driver. After being confronted with a billowing menu of options, neither of our calls were answered within 4 minutes – so we gave up. It's simply deficient. A story on Stuff later that day suggested our experience is becoming all too common.

The impending boost to front-line policing can't come soon enough. But it's not just sworn officers that are unacceptably stretched. Non-uniformed staff, in the likes of the Police Communications Centre, need greater resourcing too.

* Mike Yardley is a Christchurch based political and travel writer.

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