With road deaths 50% above the target set in the current road safety strategy (6.1 deaths per billion vkt) and with 10% increase in hospital admissions between 2004 and 2008 despite less than 1% traffic growth it is abundantly clear that recent and current governments have been distracted by frivolous minority issues such as boy racers and Auckland congestion. The diversion of resources that were supposed to have been committed to implementing the current road safety strategy has already killed more than 300 New Zealander’s, left 100 permanently on ACC and denied hospital beds to thousands on elective surgery waiting lists.

Clearly politicians have demonstrated that they can’t even take a narrow view successfully. If they do take a broader, more inclusive approach to road safety it will just give them some knew words to use when they talk the talk. The next strategy will just be filed away to gather dust just like the current one has been.

If it hadn’t been for the Japanese government tightening car safety standards in 1994 and the Chinese government muscleing in on global oil supplies would probably be another 50% worse than it has ended up being.

We now have just six weeks to cut the road toll by one-third, and there’s only one proven way to do that – push fuel prices back above the $2 psychological barrier. The petrol price spikes in 2001, 2005 and 2008 all resulted in the road toll falling by 20% – 30% for at least five months. Of course, to lock in the reductions for longer than five months the 50c road safety fuel levee would have to be spent on initiatives that are actual proven to work – booze bus blitzes, seat belt blitzes, rumbles strips, CSZs, safety barriers, pavement shape correcting, intersection improvements, and so forth. The latter all being far more labour intensive than motorway building.