Rhys Middleton suffered 13 separate injuries, any one of which alone would have killed him, when he was T-boned by a foreign driver in Tauranga last year.
Jieling Xiao was in New Zealand on a working holiday visa and was inexperienced on local roads but she had just bought a car and wanted to try it out on the day of the accident.
She had never driven faster than 30kmh and wound up on the wrong side of the road in the crash that killed the 23-year-old motorcyclist, who had been on a day out with his brother and friends.
Mr Middleton’s mother, Judy Richards, broke down in tears when she told a parliamentary select committee yesterday of the day her and her husband Clem’s lives were turned upside down.
‘‘He goes, ‘Mum, this is a phone call that no mum wants to hear’,’’ she said of the moment her older son Ryan broke the news.
‘‘He said: ‘Rhys is dead’.’’
Mrs Richards believes lives could be saved by making sure foreign drivers know the road rules.
She wants travellers on visas longer than three months to sit a driving test, and for visitors in the country short-term to answer a few questions and take a quick drive around to make sure they have got basic road skills before hiring or driving a car.
Committee chairman Jonathan Young said it would look into the request, based on a petition signed by 8535 people, and hope to report back before the September election.
Transport Minister Simon Bridges said after Mrs Richards’ petition was presented that he did not think changing the rules would save lives because figures showed foreign drivers were not causing accidents or deaths disproportionately.
Mrs Richards said she would be interested to compare the ratio of deaths caused by foreigners and locals with the amount of kilometres they travel on New Zealand roads.
