POINTS NORTH

The Far North is not quite like the rest of New Zealand in terms of its road conditions. It doesn't have a motorway system, traffic lights, or the structured road planning of a city. It doesn't have the sealed and straight roads of the wide sweeping plains of Canterbury, neither does it have the ruggedness of the roads hugging the coastline as in parts of Wellington, Dunedin or the South Island's west coast.

What the Far North does have are spurts of sealed, mostly winding, roads interspersed with shingle patches and a myriad of one-lane bridges. In some ways the Far North, in these terms, is the forgotten pocket of New Zealand.

One American visitor recently remarked on those one-lane bridges. She couldn't believe such structures still existed.

"Why aren't they just stretched a bit wider to accommodate cars?" she probably rightly asked, before adding "they're designed for horses."

In an editorial piece in The Northland Age in early December, Far North District Mayor, Wayne Brown, pointed to an important reason why these things still exist in this part of the country.

"The Northland-wide statistics the government uses for its decision-making are always swamped by Whangarei's figures which, being nearer to the national average, hide our own, thereby giving the government a false impression of how things are up here.

"Whangarei lacks our Maori population and our loose metal roads, so government misses the point of our arguments."

The arguments he refers to concern funding, of which roading is a part, adding that Far North residents contribute to the running costs of the regional council and the port but our district gets little back in the way of investment.

It means driving conditions in the Far North can be hazardous to the unwary and that includes a large tourist influx throughout the year. It's a region populated by a considerable proportion of travellers in camper vans and cars on unfamiliar territory in the hands of a fair proportion of drivers unused to the left hand side of the road.

So how do we fare up here? In the three months prior to December this year, nine people died on our roads. Eight died on state highways, one on a rural road, and the majority of crashes occurred during daylight hours. Four of the crashes involved speed, fatigue was believe to have played a part in three; three involved inattention, two involved alcohol and one death involved failure to use a seat belt, all of which suggests the culpable equation is driver behaviour, and not our roads. Statistics weren't available as to the country of origin of the drivers.

Decent roads would be a bonus but what we don't have is traffic lights. There are none north of Whangarei and that's a plus most residents hope continue. Kerikeri has roundabouts and mostly efficient ones although those responsible for installing a new roundabout at the intersection of Hobson Avenue and Kerikeri Road need to rethink design. In the few months since it was installed it has become known as the local hazard. Visitors beware.