Opinion: Median barriers - I’m with Greg Murphy on this one

Race car driver Greg Murphy says Waka Kotahi NZTA is failing to do what it exists to do. Photo / Supplied

Opinion:

Greg Murphy doesn’t mince his words, does he?

I suppose you get like that when you make a living out of driving cars around race tracks at breakneck speeds. Not much time to overthink things. Respond fast.

Which is why it is so refreshing to hear someone like him. Firstly, because he knows what he’s talking about. If you want to talk to someone who knows what cars and driving are all about, you talk to someone like Greg Murphy.

The other reason he’s so refreshing, is that he says it the way he sees it.

It’s been revealed that despite all the noises about road to zero and making things safer on the roads, Waka Kotahi is on track not to meet its objective of having 1000 kilometres of new median barriers in place by 2030. Seven years away.

All the talk has been about installing new median barriers on about 1000 kilometres of road. So far, it’s delivered 67 kilometres of new median barriers and by the time it gets to 2030, instead of delivering 1000 kilometres it will probably only deliver about half of that.

To be precise, Waka Kotahi is saying instead of 1000 kilometres it now expects to have covered 587 kilometres.

And Greg Murphy is less than impressed. He says he’s heard a truckload of excuses. But he’s over that and he thinks the transport agency needs to up its game big time. And I couldn’t agree with him more.

I’ve been convinced for a very long time that, if you were going to do one thing, installing more median barriers would be the thing that would make the biggest difference.

In fact, I think it needs to go beyond highways and - if money was no object - I’d have median barriers on pretty much every road. Because anything that keeps vehicles apart from each other has to be a good thing, surely.

And Waka Kotahi seems to think so. Well, I thought it did, anyway. But I’m starting to wonder.

As for Greg Murphy, he’s beyond the “starting to wonder” phase. As he said on Newstalk ZB today, it’s impossible for Waka Kotahi to continue to defend its lack of progress on the median barrier front.

And thank goodness for people like him. Because if Waka Kotahi thinks tinkering with speed limits is the answer - to the point where, half the time when I’m driving around the place, I don’t even know what speed I should be driving - it needs to think again.

It terrifies me how little there is protecting me and whoever else is in the car with me, against some of the absolute idiots we see on the roads day in, day out.

And I don’t know how many times I’ve heard politicians and the Waka Kotahi people or seen them on the TV nodding and agreeing that you can do what you like with the speed limits, but it won’t stop certain people ignoring them and driving like absolute losers.

But then they just go back to the office, get in front of the whiteboard and pick another road to play around with the speed limit.

Aww, what do you reckon Bruce? 80? 75? 60?

And that’s exactly why Greg Murphy is putting a bomb under Waka Kotahi today. He says delivering 67 kilometres of median barrier and being on-track to deliver half of what it said it would by 2030 shows, yet again, that Waka Kotahi is failing to do what it exists to do.