Tim Beveridge: delusional road to zero campaign

I don’t mind telling you that for some years - for decades actually - I have always taken time to think about staying alive on the roads when I’m taking a long trip –especially in public holiday periods.   

It probably goes back to a time when I was a student working in forestry and had to travel some distance each day, driven by a young supervisor who drove like he had a death wish.   

I honestly used to wake up in the morning worried about getting from A to B and home alive. So, I’m eternally grateful to my work colleague who was the first one to speak up and say “hey - if you’re not going to slow down you can stop the car and I’m getting out”. 

Ever since then, I do take time to think about how I’m going to approach driving whenever I take a long trip over the summer and so - yes, I am very conscious about road safety. 

But I probably wasn’t the first person to realise that the whole Road to Zero campaign was delusional. It seems that the last people to realise this were the responsible government agencies who are now admitting failure in their attempts to make roads safer.   

Tragically, the road toll has soared this year and is on a par with 2018, one of our worst years in recent memory. There have, of course, been failures at the ministry of both transport and police to meet certain targets. The police have not met speed targets for speed camera hours or the number of alcohol tests, and Waka Kotahi has also missed targets in regards to infrastructure but that news would come as no surprise to anyone.   

Probably one thing which I imagine they have met the target on, is the production and dissemination of those odious ads designed to somehow terrify us into driving more safely   

Frankly I’ll just be honest they just ****** me off   

I would suggest that pushing the aspirational but utterly delusional target of Road to Zero Rd has done nothing when it comes to get the public on board. It's just led to a bureaucratic obsession with grinding down the speed limits in this country which in my view will make very little, if any, difference - except maybe magnifying people’s impatience which surely can’t be helpful.   

I’m reasonably confident that our road toll would be better addressed if we simply made better decisions and were better drivers. Obviously, road quality is an issue but I can think of plenty of examples of tragic accidents which were the result of someone failing to stop at an intersection, or being distracted, or simply impatient and overtaking in the wrong place.   

Obviously, every death on the road is a tragedy but I’m not sure that having a delusional target in the form of the Road to Zero campaign gets anyone on board because it's simply not credible.   

I would prefer it if the bureaucrats and politicians would focus instead on building better roads and driver education and quit the fear mongering and instead create a credible campaign that everyone can finally relate to and believe in. And hopefully then we will make a difference.  

 

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