Editorial: High death toll mocks Road to Zero target but shows safety change is overdue

It has been a deadly start to the year on New Zealand roads. Photo / File

OPINION

The deadly start to the year on New Zealand’s roads appears to make a sorry mockery of the Government’s Road to Zero campaign.

With yesterday’s fiery crash in south Taranaki, which claimed more lives, more than 30 people have already died on our roads in 2024.

It’s the worst beginning to a year in recent memory – twice more than January 2021 (17) and 22 last year – and comes on the back of a grisly holiday road toll where 19 people were killed in crashes.

There were 341 road fatalities in 2023 – down from 372 the previous year – but still a long haul from none.

In 2019, the Government set the ambitious goal of having zero road deaths by 2050.

The campaign – and its associated $62 million marketing drive - was roundly mocked both here and abroad, as being an impossible and pointless aim.

The bloody start to the year seems to reinforce that stance.

But it’s hard to knock the ambitious goal, for road deaths should be almost entirely preventable.

As Dr Chris Wakeman of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons’ trauma committee says: “It’s been a tough few years as we’ve navigated Covid-19 and the post-pandemic landscape and a lot of the difficulties are things we can’t control. Road deaths aren’t one of them”.

“As drivers, we have it within our power to keep our roads, and thus our communities, safe.”

Speed, fatigue, alcohol, drugs, carelessness and distraction can all feature as factors in crashes.

Other countries, including Sweden, Norway and Finland - similar in many ways to New Zealand, being large and sparsely populated – have already adopted similar strategies for slashing road tolls.

Norway’s Vision Zero has cut theirs by 75 per cent, while Finland has reduced their deaths by half, and Sweden by 60 per cent.

Why can’t we follow suit?

We have one of the worst road safety records in the developed world – and we simply have to do better.

With the owners of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles about to face new road user charges for the first time, we should be pumping the revenue back into our road network, creating better and safer highways, while continuing strong road safety advertising campaigns.

Lower speed limits are also shaping up as a thorny issue for new Transport Minister Simeon Brown.

In recent years, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi has gone from 100km/h to 80km/h on 4 per cent of the highways and more are in the works.

But under the National-Act coalition agreement, the Government will “reverse speed limit reductions where it is safe to do so”.

With January’s road toll being the worst in years, and dozens of families starting the year with the ultimate heartbreak, we have to do whatever we can to try and reduce the number of Kiwis dying on our roads.

If that means our journeys take a little longer, then so be it. Any moves towards zero must be applauded.