Last year’s provisional road death total is 377, 59 higher than the previous year and one off the 2018 total.
Three years into the strategy to reduce deaths and serious injuries on our roads by 40% from the 2018 levels by 2030, that death toll does not look like progress. Nor does the road toll of 20 for the official Christmas holiday period, compared with 16 last year.
As we have said before, comparing one year with another is problematic as there are too many variables. We do not know how many kilometres are travelled, and in what sorts of vehicles, along with the road and weather conditions.
No reporting of colourless figures will do anything to ease the misery of the many families impacted by serious road crashes, whatever the cause of them.
We have shown we can lessen deaths and injuries on the road over time.
In 1973, when there would have been far fewer cars on the road, the death toll was 843.
Among the differences then were that seatbelts were not mandatory (not until 1975 for front seats and later for back seat passengers), social acceptance of drink-driving was much higher, as was the permitted blood-alcohol level, and safety seats for children under 5 were not yet required.
Yearly death figures have jumped around in the intervening years, but the trend has been generally downwards. Thirty years ago, deaths totalled 646, in 2002 there were 405 and a decade ago 308.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been blamed for some of the inactivity, including the impact on breath-testing by police, although as we have pointed out before there were concerns about the drop in testing long before Covid-19 appeared.
The police have picked up the pace with around 2.2 million tests conducted in the year to last October, but this is still below the three million expected annually. Given that police numbers have increased substantially in recent years, excuses are wearing thin.
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency must ramp up its installation of median barriers, having installed a measly 50km of them since the strategy started, when it was supposed to build 100km a year for the first four years, according to RNZ reporting.
The agency’s reporting on some of its other safety measures seems wanting, with it not able to tell RNZ how many local roads had been upgraded.
There has been some reduction in deaths and serious injuries from head-on, run-off-road and intersection crashes during the 2021-22 year, and the trend is heading downwards, but installation of safety improvements needs to speed up if longer-term targets are to be met in this area, Waka Kotahi says in its 2022 annual report.
The trend has also been downwards in the number of deaths and serious injuries associated with behavioural risk factors, 514 in the 2021-22 financial year from the 2018-19 baseline of 735.
Something heading in the wrong direction is the number of deaths and serious injuries involving vehicles with a low safety rating. The annual report says the work to improve safety standards of vehicles coming into the country was delayed due to resource constraints and reprioritisation of work at the Ministry of Transport.
Although officials advised ministers in 2021 the Road to Zero 40% reduction target over 10 years was not achievable and suggested 33% might be more realistic, the goal has not been altered.
Since that is the situation, all involved need to get on with doing what they have committed to under the strategy or face a "please explain" from their political overseers.
