Dialogue: Every journey a reminder of lives lost on the roads

By DANIEL JACKSON

I am lucky never to have had the full horror of a motor accident impact on my life.

I have done hundreds of stories on crashes, been to the scene of many and spoken with those left behind afterward.

I have had acquaintances who have died and I have been first or second on the scene at accidents but I have not lost anyone close to me.

Accidents and death have been much on the periphery as I motor my way down the highways and byways of life.

But every time I travel south from Whangarei I wonder at all the white crosses.

Visitors here must assume New Zealand is a religious country that feels the need to dot its landscape with hundreds of crosses.

But, to New Zealanders who know the true significance of the little markers, the roads between Whangarei and Auckland and Auckland and Hamilton, are surely the scariest pieces of tarseal in the country.

The white cross memorials are a fitting tribute to lives lost on New Zealand roads. They remind me of memorials to soldiers lost in some senseless battle.

The crosses to children are the saddest. Often they have toys tied to them or some other item which reminds the living of the one who has gone without fully having had the chance to live.

Memorials to teenagers are also heart-rending. Teens seem to treat the accident scene as a shrine and return to the spot again and again to perhaps scrawl a message on the cross or to leave a keepsake or flowers.

Seemingly each bend in the road between here and Hamilton has a cross or crosses and many of the straights as well. Roads that look deceptively innocent are bordered with the evidence of tragedy.

I spend a lot of time on the road. My family live about eight hours south of here and whenever I get a few days off I try to get down and see them.

But the happiness I get from seeing family and friends is always tempered by the journey there and back.

Each time I get ready to drive, I feel as if I am preparing for battle. I check the car's tyres to make sure the pressure's right. I make sure that the tank is full and there is enough oil and water.

But the most important preparation is psyching myself up, like a sportsman before taking the field, to face whatever may come on the road.

For at least the first three to four hours out of Whangarei I know I will have to deal with psychopaths, weirdos and loose units on the road to Hamilton.

There is a good chance I will see at least one accident, there is a good chance I will be one of the first on the scene and need to render assistance, there is a chance I am going to be involved in an accident and there is the possibility I will die or, probably worse, be horribly maimed.

Usually after I break through Hamilton, as I wind my way through the scarcely populated central North Island, I can afford to relax a bit. There are still crosses here and there, to let me know I'm lucky to be alive, but there are fewer of them. There is less traffic on the roads and there are fewer motorway-numbed lunatics who try to pass whenever they feel like it.

So it was with relief I learned Transit New Zealand is to build 15 new passing lanes on State Highway 1 in Northland in an effort to cut the region's road toll.

Northland's fatalities per head are double those of the rest of the country and the rate is not falling like elsewhere.

Also, the road between Auckland and Hamilton is being widened and straightened all the time. Maybe one day it will become an extension of an Auckland motorway.

Straighter roads and more motorways won't reduce the number of idiots out there but perhaps it will keep them from colliding with me, or someone I care about, long enough for police or natural selection to take care of them.