Auckland streets can be dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. Photo / 123RF
Auckland streets are much more dangerous to get around in compared with leading European capital cities.
New research shows up the high risks to pedestrians, cyclists and other more vulnerable transport users, as opposed to motorists.
It has triggered a push for lower speed limits, higher penalties and better footpaths.
A recent rise in deaths and serious injuries, following an encouraging earlier drop, is illustrated by the deaths of two cyclists in two months, and a pedestrian hit-and-run in the CBD in the past few days.
Auckland Transport says the rise is of "utmost concern", so ordered an in-depth report on the extent of the harm, drawing on hospitalisation figures, now released to RNZ.
Read the full Safety of people travelling outside vehicles - Deep dive review PDF
It makes some grim comparisons:
• Three times more pedestrians die in Auckland compared with Paris, and twice as many as in London
• Twice as many cyclists die as in Paris and Barcelona, and four times as Berlin
• For two-wheelers, including motorbikes and scooters, Auckland is six times the lowest European fatality rates
Auckland Transport technical safety leader Ping Sim said tackling this was a top priority.
"Other world cities have made the shift to speed limits that keep people safe, however they choose to travel," she said.
"Auckland and New Zealand perform lowly when compared to other OECD countries for road harm.
"And that's because those countries have moved to tried and tested solutions that save lives, like survivable speed limits and safe infrastructure."
Most of the talk about the road toll is about motorists and vehicles, but it turns out that is a blinkered view.
"Most of the harm we get is in vulnerable road users," Sim said.
"So deaths and injuries overall are much too high, and most of that is people outside vehicles.
"Seven out of 10 people who end up seriously injured and stay in hospital, are not in a metal box when that crash occurred.
"These are people who are walking, cycling, scooting, or motorcycling."
The numbers would look even worse if the data were not so patchy.
The hospitalisation rates show harm to cyclists being undercounted by six times, and to walkers by almost nine times, in official crash statistics that focus only on smashes involving vehicles. Sim said they needed to bring in ACC data too, to fill in the gaps.
The best guess is that fatalities for Auckland's vulnerable road users number 20 a year, and serious injuries 1600, at an economic cost of at least $800 million a year.
The No.1 injury is from a person on their own, tripping on a footpath - 600 such hospitalisations a year.
The new report and briefings to the AT board show black spots are everywhere.
'"There are no specific areas in Auckland where these crashes occur," they say.
"They are spread right across the region.
"Sixty-one per cent of fatal and serious injury crashes occur at locations where there has been no other injury crash in the past."
Auckland Transport is considering what to do next.
Its target is to cut total road deaths and serious injuries by 40 per cent in nine years.
So far it has made one-tenth of roads safer - building a "more forgiving system" - cutting injuries on them by almost half.
"Most crashes and deaths that happen on our roads, are people, good people, making small mistakes," Sim said.
"And it is very, very hard to protect people from the consequences of those mistakes if we don't put a safe system in place, and we have to look at all parts of that system if we are going to get it right."
The global shift is towards "survivable speeds" - here, that means on May 19, laws come into force to make it easier for councils to cut urban speed limits from 50km/h to 30km/h.
None of this will come cheap - even tackling tripping: Auckland's 7700km of footpaths already cost over $20m a year to fix and extend.
The city's new yet-to-be-approved cycling plan expects building safe, extensive cycleways to cost north of $2 billion.
"There is a significant proportion of the Auckland's roading network that needs to be improved to make it safer for Aucklanders to walk and cycle due to historical approaches to roading design," Sim reported to the AT board.
"A significant risk is that more fatalities and serious injuries will occur without availability of sufficient funding and noting the capacity to undertake remedial works."
AT was still considering the raft of recommendations in the deep-dive report, Sim said.
Among other moves, the city's fatal crash reporting process is likely to be changed to consider wider system failures, not just the crash itself; and the police, who have admitted to using booze testing and mobile speed cameras far too little in Auckland, in February began a three-month trial of a new approach aimed at deterring unsafe driving. The results should be available soon.
It's unclear where he will be.