Road Deaths in 2019

I get the feeling that most of the decreases in deaths prior to 2014 were due to cars being safer; particularly the introduction of air bags and ABS. Because road deaths were decreasing there was no political will to spend more money, slow people down, or issue more fines. This is coming back to bite now.
I really can’t think of another industry where unnecessary deaths are tolerated to such a degree. Imagine if we had 350 people dying per year from collapsing buildings – I’m sure the building code would be heavily tightened. It didn’t take long to change our gun laws recently, even though the number of gun deaths is almost insignificant compared to road deaths.
They really need to take the politics out of this issue. Give the NZTA or similar the freedom to set speed limits based on international best practices and make the NZTA responsible for every death that is occurring.

I agree that sometimes using Nordic countries can have issues with ‘apples for apples’ and even if they’re comparable, it doesn’t have the same resonance as a ‘similar’ country.

Using another example, look at the experience of Ireland. Very similar country in terms of population and similar in distribution (i.e. almost identical population centered around one main city albeit in a smaller area). Its somewhat of an outlier in Europe in terms of its car dependence and focus on investment in private transport so is a more relevant example to compare to NZ.

It’d be interesting to put the two countries on a graph but numbers peaked in the 70’s at over 600 per year and level off to about 400 in 2000, similar to NZ today.
https://www.rsa.ie/en/Utility/News/2018/2017-sees-Record-Low-of-Road-Fatalities/

You would think that with rising population and rapid economic growth it would have kept rising but instead fell to 148 last year (the previous year was 142, the lowest on record!). Imagine if NZ was on a similar path?

This article tries to explain it but I don’t see how legislative changes in 2017 have much effect. My theory is the transfer of driving from rural roads to the new motorway network combined with newer cars are the reason but would be interested if anyone can find an academic article covering rather than the transport minister tacking credit

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/06/24/ireland-has-reduced-road-deaths-by-31-heres-how/#2091d7e6e974

Total deaths is a metric for tabloid newspapers. Use deaths per vehicle-km-driven.

If you use total deaths, the number goes up when fuel prices go down (more driving per vehicle) or population goes up (more drivers). These factors are significantly larger year-on-year than incremental roading or policy changes.

The open road is certainly where much work needs to be done in reducing NZ’s road toll.
A few observations about open roads in NZ and some engineering solutions (some which have already been addressed).
1. Road marking. Many open roads are marked with white, broken (pass if safe) centre lines even on blind bends or sections with a high number of intersections and driveways. Roads should be marked clearly according to the conditions rather than leaving it to driver discretion.
Some busier sections of highway have had road marking improvements made but the majority of roads are still poorly marked.
In a nutshell, more yellow no passing lines on open roads and the possible introduction of new markings such as a broken double yellow line for roads where passing is prohibited with the exception of slow tractors or cyclists (such is the case on some open roads in Europe for instance). Also a ban on right turns on no passing stretches unless marked with a break in the line.
Also, get rid of the flush right turn lanes. It’s a lane so mark it as such. It causes much confusion to foreign drivers (as a flush means “don’t enter” in all other countries except NZ) with the resulting last second swerv into the turning lane.
2. Eliminating driveways on busier state highways as much as possible. NZ highways have a lot of driveways intersecting. Where possible parallel service roads should be built for local, rural traffic seperate from the main carriageway (such is the case on main dutch provincial roads). This eliminates much slow local (farm) traffic, right turning traffic and provides a safe cycle route.
Of course this kind of implimentation would be difficult on many open roads due to topography and skinny right of ways but could still be implimented on quite a few routes.
3. Barriers, as has been suggested many times already. I would add that I am not a big fan of steel rope barriers, mainly due to the risks posed to motorcyclists. Rope barriers have been banned in several EU countries for this reason.
4. Better intersection design. More use of roundabouts, traffic lights and grade seperated intersections. The Taupo bypass is a good example of what should be the case on more NZ highways.
5. Speed limits. Already addressed but just to reiterate, speed limits on many NZ open roads are way too high.
Obviously a lot of reengineering of the highway network is required.

“ tackled by working on all levers:”
I am not saying that there aren’t dangerous roads that need to be made safer.
But so far this discussion is just a technical one so all of the above are just as narrow.

And yes, seems like long distance driving is unfortunately left to more males hence more women passengers die above their 40s.
I interpret the lower number of women passengers in lower ages that there is a lot more self-driving there.

The right direction? Male culture change – like road safety on many levels, this would reduce not only road fatalities but also domestic violence.
Coming from Germany plus having many German/world visitors the one thing all immediately feel here:
New Zealanders are still some of the nicest welcoming caring people but when they sit behind the wheel it all changes -Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde – it’s a real problem and it’s still not enough talked about -not surprised as many participants here are men and I appreciate it’s not easy to start looking around your own habits.