Editorial: Time for new momentum on road safety

Nothing in law has more impact on everyday life than road rules. For that reason a discussion paper issued by the Minister of Transport this week will attract wide interest. It suggests as many as 60 measures to improve road safety, some of them highly contentious. The minister, Steven Joyce, says 60 initiatives is too many to take at once and he wants a public debate about which proposals might be most worthwhile.

Three of them have already attracted particular interest: an increase in the minimum driving age from 15 to 16 or 17, a reduction in the permitted blood-alcohol limit and a return to a simple give-way rule for right-turning traffic.

A case can be made for the first two from recent accident rates. The country's success in reducing its road toll since the early 1970s came to an abrupt halt in 2004. Since then, it has fluctuated around the same level and, sadly, surveys find young people are not taking the care with alcohol that they were up to five years ago. It is not just the 15-24 age group that is less responsible than before; among those aged 25-34 - some of the very people who previously displayed better habits - the proportion of drinking drivers has doubled since 2004.

Plainly education and enforcement campaigns cannot be relaxed. But the time has arrived also to raise the minimum driving age. The current age, 15, is a relic of a rural society. Farmers' children have commonly learned to drive off-road vehicles by that age and it was convenient to let them on to the quiet country roads. That is the reason New Zealand has one of the lowest driving ages in the developed world.

Last year, drivers aged 15-24 were involved in 37 per cent of all crashes causing death or serious injury. Young drivers were deemed at fault in 122 of the deaths. Many of those killed were young passengers in cars driven by their peers. The discussion paper notes that development of those parts of the brain that assess risk and control impulse is not complete until people are in their 20s.

A bill is already before Parliament to raise the minimum driving age to 16 and extend the learner licence period from six months to a year. The paper suggests a minimum age of 17 should be considered, with a restricted licence until the driver was 18. The restricted period should include 120 hours of supervised driving.

This paper says an exemption could be considered for rural youth if they could pass a stringent test, but that seems unnecessary. The higher age would be just as inconvenient to urban teenagers who needlessly drive themselves to school these days. Those quiet country roads see more than their share of drunk driving and fatal accidents.

The discussion paper proposes lowering the permitted alcohol level for all drivers to 50mg/100ml of blood. It says the present limit, 80mg, allows people to drive when they are significantly impaired. It suggests levels up to 79mg be punished by infringement penalties and only levels of 80mg or above would be taken to court. Whatever level is set it must give people a clear idea of how many drinks they can safely enjoy in a given time before driving. The discussion paper's idea of a "standard drink" would seem to vary from modern measures.

The third notable suggestion, to abolish this country's peculiar right-turning rule, would not seem worth the upheaval. The rule that left-turning vehicles give way to traffic turning right has been odd since its inception but drivers are used to it now. The momentary confusion it can create when a following car is not turning is not so serious that it is worth the confusion of changing it.

There is much else in this paper worthy of consideration. It makes a convincing case that reduction of the road toll has stalled and we need to set some priorities to keep all minds on the drive for safety.