Editorial, Tuesday January 12, 2016

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

Fun and fatalities

REMEMBER Daisy Fernandez? She was the 13-year-old girl who died when she was struck by a motorbike on Dargaville's Ripiro Beach on January 1, 2007. Her death galvanised any number of authorities into action, united in the view that the time had come to give Northland beachgoers a degree of protection from the potential for injury and death at the hands of motorcyclists.

Unsurprisingly, that determination to finally do something didn't last. In fact, nothing seems to have happened at all, although the issue of bikes on the beach at Ahipara has arisen again since then.

In December 2013 new Mayor John Carter said a speed limit had to be introduced at Ahipara as a matter of urgency, although any limit would only be effective if the police enforced it. That pleased some Ahipara residents mightily, Mr Carter's predecessor, Wayne Brown, having declined to take action that he believed would pre-empt the yet to be established Te Oneroa a Tohe management board.

In 2013 Ahipara residents asked for a 30km/h limit from Kaka Street to Te Kohanga (Shipwreck Bay), which the district council thought was somewhat excessive, but even if action had actually been taken it would not have saved 9-year-old Auckland boy Rowan Willis, who died a little further along the beach when he lost control of the go-kart he was driving on January 10, 2015.

Almost a year to the day a 4-year-old girl needed treatment from St John paramedics, and was hospitalised, after the quad bike she had been a passenger on flipped just north of Lone Pine. The 8-year-old rider and another passenger, described only as younger than 8, apparently escaped unscathed.

Unlike at Ripiro, Rowan Willis and last week's 4-year-old were at least well out of the way of other people, although anyone driving the beach between Ahipara and Waipapakauri Ramp at this time of year is well advised to keep their wits about them as quad bikes, many patently under the 'control' of inexperienced riders, whizz up and down. And there have been more mishaps, including one that saw a reportedly drunk individual hospitalised after parting company with his bike west of Kaka Street.

The problem with a speed limit at Ahipara, apparently, is that various authorities have responsibility for different parts of the beach between mean high tide and the dunes. Thus, intentionally or not, it seems to have been left to the new beach governance board. Hopefully it will do something, perhaps even ban motorbikes altogether, but isn't there a simpler answer?

Last year, after Rowan Willis died, Northland road policing manager Inspector Murray Hodson pointed out that beaches are covered by the same traffic laws that govern vehicles on public roads. That included, with no exemptions, the need for vehicles to be registered and drivers to be licensed. Clearly that places responsibility for enforcement with the police.

Granted, the police in and around Kaitaia have plenty to do without patrolling 90 Mile looking for unregistered bikes and unlicensed, unhelmeted riders, but it is their job. And not just between Kaka Street and Te Kohanga, where the potential for machines and people to come into tragic contact is greatest. It also includes those who hoon on the beach anywhere between Ahipara and Scott Point, and there are plenty of them.

It goes without saying that last week's accident should not have happened. One can safely assume that the 8-year-old rider was not licensed, and should not have been placing him/herself and his/her passengers in danger. The fact that none of the three were wearing helmets simply reinforces the obvious fact that some people don't recognise, or accept, that the standard road rules apply, and seemingly have misplaced faith in the ability of young children to control machines despite the laws of physics.

So, nine years after Daisy Fernandez died, we have apparently learned nothing. We certainly haven't done anything.

Presumably we still have a Safe Beach Driving Group, which briefly raised its head after Rowan Willis died, saying that the various component organisations, including the police, the Department of Conservation, Surf Life Saving and coastal care community groups were working to educate people.

That organisation has had a very quiet summer so far, and clearly still has a good deal of work to do, but this is an issue of law enforcement, not education.

This time last year one Ahipara resident asked how it was that a 9-year-old boy had been allowed to drive a motorised vehicle on the beach, adding that the situation was "out of control." That question and comment are as valid today as they were a year ago, and would have made headlines again last week had the four-year-old girl died.

Some years ago Robin Fountain, then Kaitaia's coroner, presided over the inquest into the accidental death of a young motorcyclist in the dunes above Tanutanu, west of Ahipara. He made the eminently sensible observation that enjoying the Far North's great outdoors carried some risk, and that those who indulged needed to have their wits about them. He also said that, tragic as this young man's death was, it would be wrong to attempt to prevent people from enjoying activities with the potential to result in injury or death.

Fair enough too. Most people, certainly not this newspaper, would want to see rules imposed to prevent anyone from having fun. There is a not so fine line, however, between having fun, even at some potential and understood risk, and abandoning common sense, not to mention parental responsibilities, altogether.

There might be nothing to stop parents from allowing their children to ride quad bikes, manufactured specifically for young children, on private property, but there are laws that prevent them from riding on public roads, and on 90 Mile Beach.

We seem to have reached the point where the enforcing of some laws has become somewhat random. Last year a farmer somewhere down the line was fined $30,000 for riding a quad bike, on his property, without a helmet. He had apparently been warned in the past, and if the fine was designed to send a shockwave through the farming fraternity it might well have succeeded.

From a purely pragmatic point of view, taxpayers have better things to spend their money on than providing medical treatment and possibly lifelong support to people who stove their heads in unnecessarily.

However, it might well be argued that an 8-year-old hooning on 90 Mile Beach - and tracks in the sand last week left absolutely no doubt as to what had been happening before the accident that left the 4-year-old unconscious - is at markedly greater risk than a middle-aged cow cocky going about his lawful business.

It would be unrealistic to expect the police to enforce the road rules on 90 Mile Beach on anything but an occasional basis, but those who do come to attention should be dealt with in the same manner as they would be if they breached the rules on a state highway. Surely responsibility for last week's mishap can be sheeted home to an adult - the kids and their quads were delivered to the scene of the accident via four-wheel-drive and a trailer; they did not get there under their own steam.

And while we're at it, how about a speed limit on the beach at Ahipara? The 30mph speed limit imposed by the Mangonui County Council in the 1980s was presumably inherited by the Far North District Council. How hard can it be?