New rules helped keep road toll low - police

Two people died when this car crashed near Opononi. Photo/ Greg Bowker

Holiday road toll (4pm December 24th - 6am January 5th)

New road rules and targeted safety campaigns are behind one of the lowest holiday road tolls in four decades, say police.

Twelve people died on the roads over the holiday period, which started on Christmas Eve and finished at 6am today, compared to 25 for the same period a year ago.

Police do not yet have figures on the number of injury accidents for the period, or how many they pulled up for drink or drug driving.

The fatality figure was third lowest holiday road toll in the last 40 years, police national road safety adviser, Superintendent Paula Rose said.

The provisional 2009 road toll, at 384, was also the second lowest for many years, following on from 365 in 2008 and 421 in 2007, she said.

"Any loss of life in unacceptable, however, comparatively speaking it's a positive result and follows on from a record low for October, November and December of last year.

"Those months, all being record lows, really turned things around, because before that we weren't looking quite as positive."

It was too early to say definitively what was behind the improved toll, but she believed there were a number of things that contributed.

That included new legislation around illegal street racing and cellphone use, which came in towards the end of 2009 and all the lead up publicity around that.

"Police have had a very high profile drink and drug driving approach, particularly before Christmas, we had two very large scale operations in the two preceding weeks up to Christmas but we have been doing that pretty full on through the last few months."

People might also be driving better, as there were reports of good driver behaviour, she said.

"We are having reports of people who are being patient, who are taking time, who are thinking about what they are doing. But of course we have always got the idiots out there, or the people who take those chances that shouldn't be taken.

"I think all our advertising campaigns have value, but it's about targeting the information at the right group of our society."

In the last reported fatal accident, a woman was killed yesterday when her car crashed into a vehicle carrying a family of tourists on the last day of their holiday in New Zealand.

The accident happened at Wenderholm Regional Park, north of Auckland. The tourists escaped with minor injuries.

- NZPA