Aotearoa / New Zealand

It’s like the “road to zero” that we’ve copied from other countries. Except in other countries they look at what makes a road dangerous, an apply fixes based on that - installing barriers, straightening corners etc. In NZ that’s too hard, so just blanket lower the speed limit as a catch all fix.

This is a bad analogy.

We are spending significant amounts on building straighter, better roads. And installing barriers along them.

Sweden, where the road to zero concept was started (as Vision Zero) before spreading to other countries, puts significant focus on reducing speeds.

This is because no matter the cause of an accident, whether someone walks away from it is significantly dependent on what speed the vehicles were going.

It's also worth noting the Govt has basically told Waka Kotahi to stop reducing speed limits outside of the highest risk roads (though they mostly only control state highways, local councils control the rest). Their focus is going to be on making sure cars are going the speed limit (by increasing the number of cameras, and over time moving to average-speed cameras; where if you get between two points faster than is possible at the speed limit, you can be ticketed - even if you weren't speeding as you went past the camera).

Despite cars getting safer and safer, our rate of serious injury and death is getting worse. No matter the reason, if we can get people (actually) driving slower then this should start to improve.

NZ will kneejerk to things but not put the hard fixes in place that are needed, because that ruffles too many feathers.

What is the problem and how should it be addressed?