Editorial: How to put brakes on the road toll

This year's road-toll statistic is one of the more disappointing, and perplexing, of the year. A lengthy period of mutual backslapping over the steadily decreasing number of fatalities has been rudely terminated. As the holiday season begins, and the potential for accidents peaks, the toll for 2003 has already galloped far ahead of last year's 404 deaths. Just when the message about drink-driving seemed to have got through, and our roads seemed a safer place, a new set of problems has emerged.

In the aftermath of last week's tragic accident in Mt Roskill, when an innocent couple were killed by a speeding teenage driver, police spoke of some young motorists' cavalier attitude. These driving novices are so confident of their ability to handle cars at high speed that they believe they can outrun the police. As a result, there have been nine fatalities during police chases so far this year, up from just one last year.

Clearly, however, the reasons for this year's toll go far deeper, and it is these factors that the Government's new road safety measures must address. The package has, quite correctly, identified two main targets - speeding drivers and those who repeatedly drink-drive. Tougher rules in the latter category will apply to motorists caught within four years of an initial drink-driving conviction. They face roadside licence suspension and vehicle impoundment. The measures are just. Such is the widespread acceptance of the present drink-driving laws that those who still flout them will probably respond only to harsher penalties.

Speed, however, is a less straightforward issue. From the first quarter of next year, the location of speed cameras will no longer be signposted. In practice, it will make little difference that the Minister of Transport failed to convince Cabinet that the cameras should be hidden. Speed cameras will be anywhere, any time. This is sure to increase their effectiveness. Victorian authorities saw no need for warning signs when they introduced speed cameras in the late 1980s, and their unadvertised presence had a dramatic and immediate effect on the state's road toll.

But this new power must be used with discretion. Undoubtedly, speed remains a major problem on our roads; it contributes to a third of all fatal crashes. In too many cases, attitude plays a major role. As Andrew Bell, the Auckland Regional Council's road safety co-ordinator, pointed out recently, New Zealanders continue to have a perverse view of speeding. Almost universally, we decry it and demand action against it; almost universally, we regularly break speed limits ourselves.

What sense there is in this dichotomy lies in the fact that speed becomes an issue only when we consider it inappropriate. In most people's minds, that place is the area where they live. In reality, of course, the really inappropriate places are accident black spots, where speed is usually a factor in crashes. It is there that speed cameras should be located. To put them on strips of road where driving 11 to 15km/h over the limit presents no danger is to invite a heightening antipathy to speed cameras - at a potential cost to the standing of the police. The social contract between the police and the public demands there be no overzealous application of the law. The new speed-camera powers must be used judiciously.

If that is achieved, the widespread perception that the cameras are more useful for swelling the Government's coffers than lowering the road toll will dissipate. Over time, discreet policing of speeding, and ongoing education campaigns, will also revise popular attitudes to speeding, as has already been the case with drink-driving. That must be the ultimate ambition of the Government's safety programmes.


Herald Feature: Road safety