Hopefully everyone had a good long weekend and while people may wish they were still on holiday rather than back at work/school/whatever, at least everyone has had the opportunity to do that.
For the first time since records began there has not been a single road death during the Queen’s Birthday weekend.
The official road toll holiday period ended at 6am today and Assistant Commissioner of road policing Dave Cliff said it was a “very positive” result for police that no families received an unexpected knock at the door to be told about a loved one’s death in a road crash.
But the zero fatalities was “only half the story” and many would have been injured in crashes caused by reckless driving during the long weekend, he said.
“The really sad thing is even if you put aside the Queen’s Birthday weekend results, there’s still about 150 New Zealanders to be dead [in road accidents] by the end of the year,” Mr Cliff said.
“In the context of that, it’s a sobering job that [police] do. The worst part of it is the knock on the door advising relatives someone who’s been killed suddenly and unexpectedly.
“So if we can avoid that for as many families as possible it’s a very positive thing for everybody.”
The official holiday period began at 4pm on Friday. It is the first time since records began in 1956 that there have been no deaths on New Zealand roads during Queen’s Birthday weekend.
Seven people were killed in four fatal crashes over the same weekend last year – a rise from the single death in 2011 and two deaths the previous year.
Mr Cliff said “back in the bad old days of the early ’70s” the worst Queen’s Birthday weekend toll was 24 deaths, and a lot of progress had since been made around road infrastructure, vehicle safety and driver attitude.
This is definitely a positive thing however as noted, it is only one weekend and there are still around 150 deaths a year on our roads however things are moving in the right direction as this graph from 2011 shows.
However while things are looking better, I still think that more could be done. There are far too many dangerous stretches of road and many of those would likely be far more deserving on investment than spending all of our money on a few selected motorway projects. As an example, instead of waiting around a decade for the Puhoi to Wellsford road to be built, we could start much sooner on projects that could ease corners, adding passing facilities etc. and start seeing safety benefits. Of course even if the full motorway project goes ahead the existing road which will still be used by an estimated 30% of traffic will still be dangerous.
It would also be interesting to see what impact lower traffic volumes are having on these numbers.
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“The official holiday period began at 4pm on Friday”
I don’t understand the focus on holiday weekends or the concept of an “official holiday period” start time. We know that the road toll has reduced in the long term due to safer cars with better brakes, roading improvements, and less drink driving. But the toll over any short period (such as three days) must be a function of weather and chance, so why do the police and the media obsess over the short period?
I guess it is just because it represents a period of time when more people are on the roads than normal.
Mike Noon from the AA has a piece on Stuff suggesting that there appears to be a real change in behaviour on the roads:
Holiday periods represnt a time when lots of people are travelling and there is not much news around so a good time to push the safety message.
Nothing to do with reductions in VKT?
I’m curious about this too – USA, Canada and Australia are also showing a trend of declining road deaths.
Good news but what is the cause I wonder. Is it successful driver education regarding drink-driving perhaps?
It is a repeat of what happened during the Great Depression and the stagflation under Muldoon. On those two occasions the critical factor it was primarily the result of drop in fatalities for young passengers which suggests that youth unemployment is the critical factor. In the 1970s the drop in youth passenger fatalities was matched by an increase in youth motocycle fatalities, a good example of why aggregated statistics can produce misleading results and hide critical details needed for effective policy formulation.
Love to explore the correlation between petrol prices and road deaths. Wonder if there’s a case for hiking petrol taxes to reduce road fatalities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86M_fV-1yKY
I think people will be surprised by this result but it answers some of the question. Modern cars are safer than older cars.
Is the steep drop at the start of the 1970s due, in part, to the introduction of seatbelt legislation?
Yes, in the three year from the announcement of the intention to introduce the law until the first oil shock driver fatalities per billion km travelled fell by 30%, passengers fell 15% (seat belts only had to fitted to front seats) and ped, cyclist and motorcyclist/pillion didn’t improve at all. 1973 is a statistical outlyer, the increase over 1972 was twice as big as any other annual road toll increase ever seen in this country, possibly a consequence of the significant winter fuel distribution disruptions caused by the dispute between maritime unions and the refining company. If the 1973 increase had been in line with the 10& – 15% trend of the previous 10 years then the driver fatality rate improvement from 1973 to 1975 would have been consistent with the first three years of seat belts. By contrast, all other types of road users had reductions almost double the previous trend. That is not consistent with the popular claim that the reduction in the open road speed limits were the cause of the improved road toll, because most peds and cyclisst are killed in urban areas. However it is consistent with the notion that the fuel crisis reduced recreational travel (high occupancy/high speed) and therefore the risk for passengers reduced more than for drivers. The similarities between economy driving and defensive driving might have significantly reduced the number of “I didn’t see you” crashes in urban areas.
I think the lowering of the seatbelt age from 15 to 8 in 1978 will have created a perceptual awareness that car travel is inherently dangerous amongst learner drivers in the late 1980s, which when combined with the introduction of the graduated driver license scheme resulted in a 50% reduction in fatal crash involvement for drivers under 25 between 1987 and 1997, more than five times bigger than the improvement for drivers over 25.