Former NZ Police road policing superintendent David Cliff said SH5 should mirror France's non-divided rural roads speed limit reduction. Photo / NZME
Former NZ Police road policing superintendent David Cliff said SH5 should mirror France's non-divided rural roads speed limit reduction. Photo / NZME
A former New Zealand road policing superintendent says mirroring France's speed limit cut on non-divided rural roads will prevent fatalities and injuries on the Napier-Taupo Rd.
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency last month proposed lowering the speed along SH5 from 100km/h to 80km/h from Eskdale to just south of Rangitaiki.
State Highway 51, between Waipatu in Hastings and Marine Pde in Napier, would also be lowered.
According to David Cliff, CEO of Global Road Safety Partnership, France recently reduced the non-divided general rural road speed limit from 90km/h to 80km/h – reducing fatalities by over 400 deaths in a year.
The former NZ Police road policing assistant commissioner said a similar approach on SH5 would be one of the most important safety measures New Zealand could choose.
"The science is very clear, reducing the speed limit on the Napier-Taupo Rd, and in fact all non-divided rural roads in New Zealand, will prevent an enormous number of road deaths and injuries," he said.
"Lives will be saved and serious injuries prevented if this proposal is implemented."
Global Road Safety Partnership is a globally-focused road safety organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Figures show that 16 people were killed in crashes on SH5 between 2010 and 2019 and another 75 people were seriously injured.
NZTA proposed lowering the speed along SH5 from 100km/h to 80km/h last month. Photo / NZME
Cliff said a 5 per cent decrease in average speed leads to approximately a 10 per cent decrease in all injury crashes and a 20 per cent decrease in fatal crashes.
"In summary, if current mean speeds on the Napier-Taupo Rd are around 100 km/h and lowering the speed limit to 80 km/h results in mean vehicle speeds reducing by around 10km/h, fatalities will decrease by around 40 per cent and injuries by around 20 per cent," he said.
"The trauma reduction will be substantial."
According to the international roading expert, New Zealand's death rate per 100,000 is more than twice the rate of the world's best-performing countries and is costing the country more than $4 billion every year.
The proposal was met with a public backlash after NZTA claimed a speed drop of 20km/h on the 83km stretch of SH5 would delay commuters by an average of one minute.
Hastings mayor Sandra Hazlehurst submitted a 12-page letter to NZTA opposing the speed limit reduction. Photo / NZME
Hastings mayor Sandra Hazlehurst and senior council staff submitted a 12-page letter to NZTA, claiming the agency's own calculations are incorrect.
The letter dated May 7 - the same day the agency issued an apology over its communication - states HDC opposes the proposal in its current form, citing "significant and detrimental impacts to local and national industry and economies".
The letter said the council feels it was "impossible to conclude that the proposed intervention is appropriate and even more impossible to have confidence that it will drive the safety outcomes".
The Hazlehurst was "perplexed" as to how a proposal of this scale could be progressed without NZTA visiting the site.
Cliff said to reduce life-saving trauma on the roads, speeding must be effectively enforced, with speed penalties in New Zealand not having increased since 1998.
"It remains a concern that speed penalties in New Zealand remain very low by international standards, with a $30 fine for travelling at 10 km/h above the limit being too low to create effective deterrence," he said.
Cliff also cited other consequential benefits to rural speed reductions including fuel savings and reduced CO2.
NZTA extended its consultation period for the SH5 and SH51 speed review to June 6.
