Blame politicians for failing road safety targets: expert

Professor Ian Johnston says New Zealand should look at how France reduced its road toll. Photo / Martin Sykes

New Zealanders should hold politicians accountable for falling well short of road safety targets, says a guest speaker at a traffic conference in Auckland this week.

Professor Ian Johnston said yesterday he was not hearing the community "yelling at the politicians" for getting nowhere close to a target of no more than 300 road deaths by next year.

"I don't see evidence that people are doing anything than simply accepting that targets are not being met," said the professor, deputy chairman of Australian's National Transport Commission and former head of the Monash University Accident Research Centre.

Although last year's toll of 366 deaths was the lowest since 1959, the annual 12-month rolling total was back up to 396 by Friday.

Professor Johnston, who will address 200 delegates to the Local Authority Traffic Institute (Trafinz) annual conference this morning, said NZ should consider the example of France.

It was a "laughing stock" among Western European countries until former President Jacques Chirac took personal responsibility for road safety in the early 2000s.

"They were doing no speed enforcement and practically no drink-driving enforcement," the professor said.

But when President Chirac attended a meeting at which other European leaders started poking fun at him about France's appalling record, in which 14 people in every 100,000 were being killed a year, "he got his folk in and said you will fix this - you won't have a job any more unless you get the road toll down".

"And within three years they had taken about 30 per cent off the number of deaths. That is the power of commitment - if you don't have commitment from the top you're not going to get anywhere."

Although the road toll for every 100,000 French residents has fallen to just below eight deaths, making it similar to Australia's, New Zealand's remains about 10. The Ministry of Transport admits falling well behind the target for next year, which was set in 2002, when there were 405 road deaths in New Zealand.

Professor Johnston was unimpressed that the Government had yet to set any toll targets to accompany a new safety strategy towards 2020 on which it is consulting the public.

Transport Minister Steven Joyce has said that although he will not rule out setting targets, he wants to hear the views of road users first in submissions due by October 2.

But Trafinz president Andy Foster said his organisation was pleased the Government was working with the public on forming a concept in which everybody should take responsibility for road safety rather than simply blaming the driver.

Professor Johnston welcomed proposals in a discussion paper for lower blood-alcohol limits and raising the driving age to 16 or 17 and urged the Government to resist rural lobbyists' bids to keep the minimum age at 15.