Road safety debate reaches gridlock

By TIM WATKIN

Let's start with the facts we all agree on: the road toll is up again this year after a three-year decline. And ... that's about it.

Ask what brings about this toll and how we can bring it down, and you'll find little agreement. The main problem is the cars, some experts say. Others, it's the roads. Still others, it's the economy, stupid. More education will help, say some.

Waste of money, say others. Stricter enforcement, perhaps, or lighter enforcement. There's an argument for nearly every direction, and there's little consensus about which will lead us to safe, open roads and which will take us down a deadly cul-de-sac.

The issue is back in the nation's headlights this week following a rash of crashes last Sunday. Five people were killed in three separate accidents, which took the year's toll to 410, up from 404 at the same time last year.

After a fall from 508 to 462 in 2000, then to 455 in 2001, this year's rise puts pressure back on the Land Transport Safety Authority and the Government to explain what's going wrong, just when we thought we were getting on top of the problem.

Then, on Tuesday, Transport Minister Paul Swain launched the Government's latest scheme to drive down the road toll - scratch cards.

At a cost of $11 million, cards with 10 road safety questions are to be given to drivers when they renew their licence or vehicle registration or go for their warrant of fitness. Anyone answering nine or 10 correctly will go in the draw for a new car.

LTSA director David Wright says most motorists go 60 years without any obligation to brush up on the road code. The scratchies offer an incentive for people to take a shorthand refresher course and the car prize will generate interest from those who would otherwise ignore the safety message.

With 85 per cent of crashes attributed to human error, "clearly we have to educate people for safer driving".

But the scheme has raised a long-simmering debate in the road safety community about education campaigns. As ideological as it is practical, the debate is as intense as an argument over religion or politics. And there are competing agendas at play - governments, car manufacturers, alcohol companies, insurance companies, for example, all have a lot of money riding on where the debate goes.

Criticism of road safety campaigns is risky. The public likes to see a government "do something" about the problem, and to oppose a road safety campaign can be seen to be against road safety.

And you quickly run into an unanswerable argument: surely any campaign is worth infinite money and effort if it saves just one life.

Problem is, the resources for road safety are fatally finite. And with the toll on the rise again, some have been emboldened to say our road safety dollars are not being spent wisely.

"Telling people to drive safely is an expensive waste of time," road safety campaigner and author Clive Matthew-Wilson has written in an article for the 2004 Dog and Lemon Guide, released to the Weekend Herald. "The time and money spent promoting highway safety strategies that don't work inevitably steal critical resources from those that do," he writes.

Education programmes have been around as long as the car, Matthew-Wilson says in person, but the toll worldwide has only really come down since the 1970s, when road designers and car manufacturers focused on safety rather than just the bottom line.

In New Zealand, 1973 was the most deadly year on our roads, with 843 people killed. Now it's half that.

The LTSA's own report on its 10th anniversary this year takes credit for the falling toll, especially in the past five years, then later mentions that it was also five years ago that dual air-bags and side-intrusion beams became common in New Zealand cars - but it fails to make a link.

Add collapsible steering columns and mandatory seatbelts and you've got the main reasons for a falling road toll, Matthew-Wilson says. That 85 per cent of crashes are the result of human error tells him the opposite of what it tells Wright - after so many decades, education has made little difference.

The problem is people assume education is for someone else - those other bad drivers - not them.

Rather than trying to educate people to modify their behaviour, he says the money should be spent on modifying the environment; that is, building better roads. Look at the Auckland-Hamilton highway, he says, notorious for head-on collisions. It has too many cars and too few passing lanes.

"Therefore unsafe behaviour is virtually inevitable. Do you want me to tell you how to solve the problem instantly? Separate the two lanes.

"Rather than trying to modify people's behaviour ... let's protect people from the consequences of their own stupidity."

Taking a break from working on a Morris Minor called Basil, Matthew-Wilson, a trained mechanic and president of the Living Classics car club in Ponsonby, quotes a major study by the American Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

After collating dozens of other studies over the past 30 years, it found that "research indicates education has no effect, or only a very limited effect, on habits like staying within the speed limit, heeding stop signs and using safety belts".

Institute chief scientist Allan Williams adds baldly, "When good scientific evaluations are undertaken, most of the driver improvement programmes based on education or persuasion alone are found not to work".

Dr Ron Christie has come to much the same conclusion. A psychologist and road safety consultant who has worked for the LTSA and most of the Australian state transport authorities, he compares road safety campaigns with vitamin C.

People think it's good for them and there's anecdotal support that it is good, but next to no scientific evidence to justify that.

"Road education is in the same bucket," he says from his Melbourne office. "People have a fundamental belief that it works. But if you look at the empirical evidence you find most of the time it has no effect and sometimes makes it worse."

A defensive driving course for novice drivers, for example, can have a perverse effect. It can desensitise them to the dangers of the road and make them over-confident. The same applies to any public health campaign, he adds.

To stop drownings, the assumed solution is to teach everyone to swim. But more than half the people who drown in Australia can swim and doubts are growing over pre-school swimming lessons, because they can make both child and parent over-confident to the point of carelessness.

Christie says education changes a person's knowledge and skill, but just because a person knows how to drive well, it doesn't mean they will. Studies of racing car drivers showed they had an on-road crash record worse than a group of average drivers.

The reason every country still does campaigns is largely political. "If all they did was enforcement and road works, they would not bring the public with them. You've got to tell people what you're up to."

Asked if the scratch card campaign will influence the road toll, he says, "To be blunt, it probably won't".

Wright concedes he doesn't have any evidence that a general education campaign is needed or will work, but he remains determinedly convinced of its usefulness.

"We are certain that when people start to look at the questions they will become aware of issues and that can only assist them. People who have a better knowledge of the road code will be better drivers."

That thinking is supported by Dr Samuel Charlton, senior lecturer in psychology at Waikato University and a senior scientist with Transport Engineering Research New Zealand, who believes the LTSA is on the right track.

He says there's as much research contrary to Christie's argument as there is supporting it. He has worked with the US Air Force and says even in that most macho of environments, pilots take great care because they are so well trained in the risks of flying.

He agrees that education has little direct impact on changing attitudes, but if it sticks to the facts it can improve skills.

"And there's research that shows when you focus on the facts then attitudes follow."

Charlton points out a perversity in the argument that better cars have been the key to falling road tolls - as cars have become more reliable, people have become more complacent about driving, and that causes crashes. Looking for the reasons why the road toll is not falling faster, he says, "If I was to put my finger on one thing, taking driving for granted would be that thing".

Wright, too, has an argument against giving car improvements too much credit for falling fatality numbers. "If it was purely and simply down to vehicle improvements, why is it that the toll in many American states hasn't improved." The LTSA remains committed to a broad-brush approach to trying to stop speeding, drink-driving and not wearing seatbelts; the factors most commonly cited as the three major contributors to road deaths. Its plan to combat those is focused on engineering, education and enforcement.

But the last of those Es is also coming under attack. This year's increase in deaths comes as the police have issued a staggering $1.5 billion in traffic tickets in the year to June 2003 - up $300,000 on the previous year - despite a drop in average speeds.

"We were always told that if we enforce harder and lower the speed we will drop the toll," says National's police spokesman Tony Ryall, "but it's not working." He recently released LTSA figures that show 75 per cent of fatal crashes happen below the speed limit. "The problem is not speed per se, it's excessive and inappropriate speed."

Matthew-Wilson agrees. He would prefer police to focus on black spots and the most dangerous group of drivers - 18 to 24-year-old working-class males.

Wright likens the authority's efforts to trying to run down an escalator that's going up. Unchecked, the growing number of cars would push the toll up, but their mix of campaigns is succeeding. "If we stop still and don't take these interventions we'll be carried back up that escalator."


Herald Feature: Road safety