Letters: Action needed on State Highway 2

A reader says action is needed to make State Highway 2 safer. Photo.File

I am appalled at how long it takes to get decisions from NZTA and other agencies who are deemed responsible for our lives and wellbeing on New Zealand's roads.

I write in support of John Watt of Tauranga, who wrote in your paper today (Letters, February 7) regarding two more accidents on SH2, and the time taken by NZTA to trial lower speeds for safer driving on that road.

I understand new speed signage can be introduced to any prioritised road within two to three weeks of notifying an urgent requirement. What happened?

Surely nowhere in the country could be more urgent that SH2 with its shocking history, and daily repetitions of human loss, injury, family pain and suffering. And it's not the road. It is the drivers. And that's who we need to target.

Come on NZTA. Show us that you do care by taking these three affordable actions to save lives immediately:

1. Reduce the top speed all the way from Tauranga to Waihi, strictly enforced at 80km/h.

2. Introduce really meaningful levels of fines. Phones and texting crimes at the top level. All fines to be paid into a fund that supports further safety methods.

3. As many speed cameras as we can afford on that route.

How about that NZTA? Really easy!

Russell McKenzie
Pāpāmoa

History can't be selective

Tommy Wilson says that "surely, the time has come, for schools to teach our history hakihaki (warts) and all" (Opinion, February 8).

This clearly should start at the time that Māori first arrived and include the pre-European Archaic and Classic periods. Periods that were characterised by a trend away from pacifism to a warrior culture, cannibalism, the development of weapons, tribal fights that killed more people than during the European-Māori wars and the biggest battle ever fought on NZ soil. In fact not unlike the "unbridled greed" Tommy notes was occurring in Europe.

We should also note the hunting to extinction of many bird and other species.

Only by starting at the very beginning can we get a true appreciation of the influences and impacts, both positive and negative, that humans have had on this country over time.
B. Ingram
Pāpāmoa

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