KEY POINTS:
The run-up to the New Zealand round of the Supercar V8 championships is gathering momentum with most drivers having arrived and keen to get a good look at the Hamilton street circuit.
Kiwi V8 driver Greg Murphy and his Tasman Motorsport teammate Jason Richards are revved up at the prospect of racing on home soil in front of an enthusiastic crowd.
However not all drivers are happy campers. Veteran Aussie Russell "The Enforcer" Ingall has said this weekend's event may be a bit of crash fest.
Not so, says Murphy, who would rather race at 250km/h surrounded by 25-plus other cars all travelling at the same speed on a narrow piece of tarmac than drive on our public roads. Driving from Auckland to Hamilton scares Murphy and Richards far more than a weekend going flat out mere centimetres from a concrete wall.
"It's a massive issue for me," said Murphy yesterday. "I'm doing some stuff in Hamilton with a number of schools. It really annoys me that there's always been a lot of talk about road deaths but there's very little action and the killing still goes on."
Since January, there have been more road deaths than in the same period last year.
"The Government were crying about what a wonderful job they had done 12 months ago. They haven't got an answer for that and they're not going to have one either."
If anything we should be thanking the manufacturers for saving more and more lives each year, he said. As each year went by cars were being made with the number of safety features eclipsing in-car entertainment devices.
These safety improvements did not fix the endemic problem, bad driving habits. Young drivers were not taught how to drive a car; they were taught how to answer questions.
"Cars are safer," said Murphy. "But people are still going to crash. The Government wants better roads and better cars but that's not going to stop crashes. They haven't done anything about the people who drive cars."
He said there would always be "racing incidents" but deaths were very rare and were mainly due to mechanical failure or inexperience.
Richards said: "We drive very safe cars at very high speeds because we know what we're doing and are always aware of what happens around us."
