Put people before money, crash survivor pleads

Tamati Paul says it's important that everyone is regularly reminded of the damage drunk drivers do to people's lives. Photo / Dean Purcell

Car-crash survivor Tamati Paul is urging the Government to consider people's lives rather than financial bottom lines in reconsidering cuts to community safety education programmes.

"Please don't look at it with dollar signs - look at people's faces," was his plea yesterday, when asked about a funding review by the Transport Agency of budgets for community education and other programmes such as school travel plans.

The former Olympic kayaking contender and kapa haka group leader had just gained acceptance into the police in 1998 when his dreams were shattered by a recidivist drunk-driver travelling on the wrong side of the road at 165km/h and more than three times over the legal alcohol limit.

Evasive action by Mr Paul, who was driving along the East Coast highway near Tolaga Bay at a sedate 85km/h, managed to save his infant son and former fiancee but left him with severe brain haemorrhaging, abdominal and chest injuries, a collapsed lung and multiple fractures.

Although not expected to live, his strength as an athlete who had won selection for the 2000 Sydney Olympics helped him to pull through to the point that he now travels around schools and community groups in Auckland and further afield as a champion for road safety education with an ACC-funded DVD about his crash.

But funding for his travels is under threat, as it is for scores of community education programmes throughout the country.

Mr Paul still has considerable difficulty walking and speaking, but there is no doubt about the urgency of his appeal for graphic evidence of lives marred by careless or reckless drivers to be kept in the public eye.

"Everybody needs to be reminded, it's a real must - it's not a request," he told the Herald at a display he set up for 200 delegates in Auckland for the annual conference of the Local Authority Traffic Institute.

His appeal followed confirmation to the conference by Transport Minister Steven Joyce that the funding category including community safety education as well as national advertising campaigns was the first to come under a "value for money" review by the Transport Agency.

Mr Joyce said he shared the agency's concern "that we need to ensure we are getting some specific and achievable results".

He had been asked by Henriette Rawlings, a Dunedin City community road safety adviser who chairs the Safe and Sustainable Transport Association, what evidence he used to justify "substantial funding cuts" already made to community education programmes.

The minister said in a speech to the conference that he was keen to achieve a road safety system "that saves the most lives and prevents the greatest number of serious injuries for every dollar invested".

But Ms Rawlings told the Herald that the minister had failed to answer her question, which was prompted by an average 12 per cent cut in community education and travel demand budgets in the latest national land transport programme.

A funding category which also includes road safety advertising has been cut from $50.2 million last year to an annual average of $40 million for the next three years.

Ms Rawlings accused the minister of putting the cart before the horse.

"He's already done the funding cuts before he does the review."

She said New Zealand was a world leader for the way it had mobilised community support for road safety education, using the invaluable work of volunteers to make Government funding stretch further.

That involvement was essential for developing the "constituency" for which she said Mr Joyce acknowledged he needed to implement a new road safety strategy.

Nelson City road safety co-ordinator Margaret Parfitt said her budget had been cut 37 per cent, forcing her to scrap two programmes including a four-week course for young driving offenders, very few of whom reoffended after graduating.

The Automobile Association, which wants the Government to use revenue from traffic fines to boost road safety education, said it was particularly concerned about an abolition of national programmes in schools and for elderly drivers.