AT wins global road safety award, minister dismisses it as ‘woke’
Reducing speed limits in the country’s biggest city has just won Auckland Transport a global road safety award in London.
But the minister who pledged to reverse the slowdown nationwide has called the award “woke”, and says he has the support of most New Zealanders for his plans.
The push behind lowering the speed limit is for public safety, to decry that as ‘woke’ is juvenile and petty.
There is a perfect madness to this isn’t there?
Government’s push and pump mass immigration.
That mass immigration has enormous impacts on our roads.
Our roads need upgrading which causes more gridlock.
National weaponises your impatience to lift speed limits that will generate more fatalities as National try to unclog the gridlock by privatising roads and pushing poor people off them, without investing in the public transport infrastructure for them to move to.
You have had your impatience at the gridlock manipulated into lifting speeding rates that won’t create productivity or make things safer.
Let’s be very honest.
We are such a cheap bastard nation altho we don’t build safe roads or well engineered roads.
We build cheap goat tracks through Mordor.
And because we are such a nation of cheap bastards we have this appalling carnage on the roads that costs us 4% of GDP!
4% of GDP from terrible car crashes!
It’s a social obligation and responsibility to properly fund and build safe roads when the damage being caused is 4% of GDP!
BUT because we are a nation of cheap bastards, instead of building and engineering safe roads we simply lower the speed limits which generates gridlock, impatience and extreme frustration because there are no upgrades to infrastructure to cope with the huge levels of immigration!
Of course we should lower speeding limits but this must be ON TOP OF better built roads and better engineered public safety and we do that by TAXING THE RICH!
Not user pays, not more privatisation, we need a Ministry of Green Works that builds the roads and we need to properly fund it by TAXING THE RICH!
We need to see our roads as part of the common good and engineer it for safety, adaptation to climate change and funded by TAXING THE RICH!
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Simeon Brown is a child with a naive childish petty attitude…But worse still …he’s a dangerous child.
He has no life experience…running the books at his parent’s church…ugh..and yet here he is, overriding the very best traffic engineering and road safety advice because a bunch of beer bellyed blokes leaning on the bar reckon that lowering speed limits is ‘woke’ nonsense.
Any fool can see, that it is he who is the ‘woke’ one… Yet another ‘woke’ anti-science,anti-regulation god- botherering dreg that seems to wash up in either National, Act or N.Z.First..
Who in their right mind would want to be associated in any way with that bunch of weird unhinged dangerous lunatics.
Where on earth do the National Party find these people?…
Is this the best they’ve got?
Where is Luxon’s leadership here ?
Public safety for every man, women and child is paramount and is what he is elected to oversee….not fucking around with childish pranks on Tik Tok!
Luxon goes to the same church
Yes an honest man.
I hear he’s up for Politician of the Year.
He seems to be a very enthusiastic person.
Poor old lefties cannot comment without being horrible,life dealt them no aces,a poor sorry lot.
Cheer up you are now being looked after by the Coalition of Caring.
Simeon Brown is a total douche bag. He has the same stupid trait that seems so prevalent in ZB land. Anything you don’t agree with is woke. Like it or not, it is not a virtue signal to associate reduced speed with reduced harm. It’s a simple fact. Brown is a class A wanker which makes him perfectly suited to being part of this increasingly detestable government.
Top chap doing a splendid job is our Simeon.
If I remember correctly during the last National govts reign weight restrictions on trucks were relaxed allowing much larger trucks carrying heavier loads onto our roads. The idea being that this would allow goods to be transported more economically. Unfortunately the down side is that our roads were not built to cope with these loadings and massive damage to our roads is the consequence.
Yes truck load limits were increased from 40 tons to an H labelled truck which can now carry 53 tons.
Very sensible decision.
Most have only increased from 45 tonnes- the prior limit- to 48 tonnes under HPMV rules.
And most of those combinations previously had a four axle truck, three axle trailer combination and had to either have a new axle added on an existing trailer, or a new trailer, to go to 48 tonnes under the 8 axle limits.
Especially in the case of log trailers, those three axle trailers would often have been running substantially higher axle loadings than four axle ones are now, despite carrying more weight. Same deal for those businesses where 9 axle combinations are practical- you might be able to carry 54 tonnes, 6 tonnes more than an 8 axle, but it’s spread over another axle.
Underbuilt bridges are another matter entirely of course. As is the question of just how badly New Zealand roads are built for anything that weighs more than a Morris Minor, let alone any sort of truck at all.
For many years, the idea that speed kills has been a pillar of road safety campaigns. We now have a minister who rejects all evidence of this and forces local authorities and others to obey his command. He is also slipshod in using “woke” without knowing its meaning.
Just take a short ride down state hiway 3 starting in Carrol st in Te Kuiti and see the damage to the road to Mokau .It is constantly being patched in the same places every 3 months .Browns big statement that he will patch pot holes within 24 hours is a bloody lie .One pot hole grew big enough that my nissan was able to fit the whole car inside and it was patched a month after it first started appearing .It swallowed a truck load of hot mix which will last about a month with the number of 50 ton trucks that travel that road which has line haul to wellington and new plymouth
My grand daughter counted 17 of these monster trucks on a ten minute drive one after noon at around 5 pm on state hiway 3 ,while dodging pot holes in the road
Interesting stats Gordon W.
Yes there are also large numbers of camper vans and caravans on the same road .
Gosh gw that’s awful.
Martyn – Auckland Transport is bloody awful…bus drivers getting attacked, train services not running, and non stop road works on choke points across Auckland.
Complete generalisation Nathan. It depends which part of Auckland you are in for a start. I use public transport on and off and it’s been the complete opposite of what you say. Let’s be honest, you are just as likely to meet arseholes in supermarkets.
Wheel – No train service across Auckland from 27th Dec – 27th Jan, and the Union claiming Auckland Transport is not good…
Complete generalisation Nathan. It depends which part of Auckland you are in for a start. I use public transport on and off and it’s been the complete opposite of what you say. Let’s be honest, you are just as likely to meet arseholes in supermarkets.
Agree nathan but isn’t it wonderful we have in our Mayor Wayne Brown probably the best Mayor Auckland has ever had.
You write as if we are still a first world country with a first world income Martyn. How bizarre.
New Zealand is still one of the richest countries on a per capita basis, and even just on a purely resource basis. Our capacity for domestic energy production alone (hydro + solar + wind + supplementary geothermal and back up fossil fuels) – where we have under invested because of privatisation – places us as an extremely energy rich nation, which is far more pertinent than a “paper money” income.
Good point Pman – how about one link say to the richest countries per capita. The rest could be pub talk without some reference. I’m sick of Kiwis coming out with their favourite platitudes when we are confronted by issues that are entirely new in our known universe and history.
And that’s why AO/NZ =14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each with a net wealth starting at $50 million and four now *foreign owned banks making the worlds second highest profits from us, second only to Canada.
* Foreign = Australian banks who are in turn owned by U$A banksters.
Surely to Christ we’ll wake up one day and realise that we’re being mercilessly fucked without the kissing.
*The Press 2023
https://www.thepress.co.nz/business/350094635/nz-banks-some-most-profitable-world
We Kiwis are a farming primary industry. Ya know. Food an’ that. We export enough foods to feed an additional 40 million people so it’s reported.
We AO/NZ’ers must endure seeing, or actually experiencing literal poverty and hardship while we must live with the parasitic billionaires and multi-millionaires and the four australian banks who’re banks operating out of a country that’s our only real primary exporting competitor. In other words, Kiwi billionaires and millionaires are slave trading us to the Australians to make sure we remain penniless and powerless so as to make our exploitation all the more seamless and worry free for them.
A counter narrative please, I dare anyone. As I’ve written many, many, many times before. We need Crown intervention to help us untangle ourselves from a very large, very nasty web of greed spanning the last 88 years at least. The National Party. AKA The Mafia.
Wikipedia
National formed in 1936 through amalgamation of conservative and liberal parties, Reform and United respectively, and subsequently became New Zealand’s second-oldest extant political party.[9] National’s predecessors had previously formed a coalition against the growing labour movement. National has governed for six periods during the 20th and 21st centuries, and has spent more time in government than any other New Zealand party.[10][11]
The Guardian
Māori tribes make rare plea to King Charles for intervention in New Zealand politics
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/11/new-zealand-maori-tribes-letter-king-charles-treaty-of-waitangi
The Guardian
New Zealand opposition parties back Māori plea to King Charles
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/12/new-zealand-maori-treaty-of-waitangi-letter-king-charles-government-opposition-support
Farmers? *Maori are your besties. Who’d a thunk it right?
Please understand that I understand that not all farmers are non Maori.
“we need a Ministry of Green Works that builds the roads” Agree, except Greens only support one metre wide roads for bikes!
good plan in every city in the world .
Yes. And in addition to all that it shows why everybody on the left should stop using the word ‘woke’. Because it is now a right-wing slur against any policy, attitude, thought, or sentiment that shows any concern for the wellbeing of others, for society as a whole or expresses any form of collective solidarity rather than personal striving for private advantage.
correct
Absolutely right. As soon as anyone uses the word Woke it’s a red flag for all of the above and secret bigots to boot. It’s intellectually lazy for anyone who claims to be on the left to use that stupid term that means nothing now it has been so taken out over context of the original meaning in the black community, and which was not the slur it has become. More racist appropriation.
“And in addition to all that it shows why everybody on the left should stop using the word ‘woke’”
I’ve been saying that on here for several years now.
Big problem is people on the Left are quite dim.
Q: Who says being woke is a negative?
A: Right wing propagandists and strategists, their redneck targets and any useful gullible left-wingers who buy into their jargon/narrative and thus indirectly promote it.
Frankly the Left Wing have and always will be handicapped by their stupidity.
Pee Wee Brown really is a petrol and truck loving bonehead. One of the first things the CoC did was aggressively dis–incentivise EVs, to the extent that uptake has dropped. Wide spread uptake of solar power and EVs was a win win as prices were starting to come down on new EVs.
But hey increasing the highway meat grind as they attack public health as well! is seen as the way to go.