Campaigner blames government after 8 die on road without median barrier – Dog And Lemon Guide
The government has blood on its hands over the latest multiple fatality, says the car review website dogandlemon.com.
Editor Clive Matthew-Wilson, who is an outspoken road safety campaigner, says:
“Eight people are dead because a median barrier was missing off that road. That’s the simple fact. If the government is serious about lowering the road toll, the highest priority must be given to improving the safety of our Third World roads.”
“How many more of these tragedies do we have to put up with before the government takes serious action? We get a section of barrier here, a section of barrier there, but the vast majority of our state highways are an accident waiting to happen.”
“There are thousands of extra cars pouring onto our roads each month, yet many of our roads haven’t improved much since the 1950s.”
A study by Monash University of the effectiveness of roadside fencing and median barriers concluded that: “reductions of up to 90% in death and serious injury can be achieved, with no evidence of increased road trauma for motorcyclists.”
Matthew-Wilson adds that the procedure for improving roads also hasn’t changed much since the 1950s.
“The cost of installing a median barrier ranges from about 1.5 million to 2.5 million dollars per kilometre. Up to one million dollars of this cost is bureaucracy. That’s simply unacceptable. The end result of this slow and expensive bureaucratic process is fewer median barriers and therefore multiple fatalities, such as the one that occurred yesterday.”
Matthew-Wilson describes many New Zealand roads as being like “a staircase without a handrail – you make the slightest mistake, you’re going to get hurt.”
Seeing the light
Matthew-Wilson also slammed the government for not adopting other simple, cheap measures to improve road safety.
“The government has known for twenty years that daytime running lights can reduce daytime accidents by 25%. So why aren’t these lights fitted to every vehicle?
Daytime running lights are compulsory in the European Union and are now fitted to many new cars in this country, but can be easily retrofitted to older vehicles.
According to multiple studies on the effectiveness of daytime running lights in improving road safety, the potential savings are:
• 25% of daytime multi-vehicle fatal accidents (11% of all non-pedestrian fatal accidents)
• 28% of daytime fatal pedestrian accidents (12% of all fatal pedestrian accidents)
• 20% of daytime multi-vehicle injury accidents
• 12% of daytime multi-vehicle property accidents
Unlike spotlights and foglights, which often dazzle other drivers, daytime running lights are designed solely to be noticed. Thanks to LED technology, daytime running lights now use less electricity than some car stereos.
Panic responses
Matthew-Wilson hopes the recent spate of serious accidents will spur the government into urgent action, but he’s not optimistic the government will make the right decisions.
“My guess is that the government will simply panic and try again to lower the speed limit, even on safer roads. However, this action will alienate millions of motorists, without actually solving the problem.”
“Most speed-related car crashes involve a small group of young, poor males, who don’t wear seatbelts and who are often blotto when they crash. Speed signs and road safety messages are meaningless to this group.”
“A speed limit sign will not protect your family from a speeding yobbo. A median barrier will.”
The fact is that no amount of money spent on upgrading our roads will counteract the risk of the seriously crap driver.
And unfortunately New Zealand has many of these.
There has been some improvement, and an indication of this is how instead of half a dozen or so of drivers in a long queue doing the ‘ducking out into the opposing lane to assess the passing potential’ thing there will be only one.
And this numpty will be the one who simply has to pass, despite the maneuver not getting him/her any further down the road…just because.
This is the person that needs to be quietly removed from the road and given the help they need to see that they are the bad driver….not the majority of other drivers content to stay in line and go with the albeit slow flow.
Impatience and arrogance….when we can pass laws against these the problem will be solved.
Clive Matthew-Wilson, is partly right when he said our “roads are third world roads” like a staircase without a handrail.” – but there is an elephant here in the room, as no one is asking for regional rail passenger service to be provided now that the public own the railway.
Our Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre (CEAC) ‘Transport project’ under our public pressure group CEAC has for 18 years been asking successive labour/National Governments since 2001 to restore “rail freight and passenger services to all our provinces again” to save road fatalities and make travel safe again.
In HB/Gisborne ‘Napier Port’ have recently advised the media that by 2027 truck use will increase by 187% so our roads are now “truck gridlocked Clive Matthew-Wilson so the roads are not fit for truck purpose now let alone in 2027.
This was a normal safe travel method back in the 1980’s when we had a “public owned railway” as we have now.
This will remove the road deaths we see now increasing due to no passenger services in many provinces today,
All most provinces have been left with (and usually avoid) are those crowded buses with no toilet faculties and uncomfortable travelling experiences on our tight winding hilly roads.
Rail travel is clean, safe and comfortable with no stress at all for the traveler we have constantly been told by rail users.
Here below is our letter to the Labour/NZF government yesterday.
Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre Incorporated (CEAC) Est’ 2001.
PO Box 474. Napier. Email;
Protecting our environment & health.
In association with other Community Groups, NHTCF and all Government Agencies since 2001.
• Health and well-being.
• East Coast Transport Project.
29th April 2019.
URGENT NEED TO RESTORE REGIONAL RAIL PASSENGER/FREIGHT SERVICES TO SAVE LIVES.
To Honourable Minister of Transport Phil Twyford & Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern.
Countless times in the last eighteen months we have pleaded to you to restore our public regional passenger and freight rail services, to save road deaths using more rail to move freight and passengers.
Have you ever considered using a ‘mixed rail train’- using both freight and combined passenger services- as used globally and is called “mixed trains”?? see here = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_train
Since the last plea (we included again below) we sent to you both on 7th April 2019.
Yesterday on 28th April 2019; – we now see the gravity of the road deaths again during this April, as yesterday another eight people die in an single two car crash near Taupo, (The press release is below covering that tragedy)
• Government must work with cabinet to resolve these issues now of overuse of public funding of only roads, roads, and more roads just for freight trucks.
• restore our public regional passenger and freight rail services, to save road deaths using more rail to move freight and passengers.
• ‘As the NZ Government offers a subsidy to buy an electric car’ why not also for ‘Electric locomotives’ also?
• We hope Government will include our input here in your plans for finishing the Zero Carbon Bill and use the EY report here also.
https://www.kiwirail.co.nz/uploads/Publications/The%20Value%20of%20the%20Rail%20in%20New%20Zealand.pdf
Secretary.
Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre. CEAC.
https://thestandard.org.nz/how-to-get-there-7-4-19/#comment-1605085
7th April 2019.
24 people have died on our roads during the last single week, the worst statistic NZ has ever seen.
We have been advocating to Government since 2001 in Napier, since 2001 in support for rail.
https://www.niwa.co.nz/sites/niwa.co.nz/files/import/attachments/chc2006_6.pdf
Published in “Environmental Science and Policy” Vol 9 (2006) pp 55-66 TRANSPORT COST ANALYSIS: a case study of the total costs of private and public transport in Auckland. Astrid Jakob1 , John L. Craig1 and Gavin Fisher2 1. University of Auckland, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Tamaki Campus, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand 2. National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, 269 Khyber Pass, Newmarket Auckland, New Zealand.
EXTERNAL COST OF TRANSPORT To estimate the total cost of transport, it is necessary to look at indirect or external costs simultaneously. External costs are not born by the public and private transport users – they are paid by others, generally the society as a whole, but also the environment. These mainly comprise: external accident, air pollution, climate change, external parking, congestion costs and others (Becker, 2002; Litman, 2002). Of all transport related external costs evaluated in the literature, external accident, air pollution and climate change are the three largest (Maddison, 1996), comprising 77% of the overall costs (Becker, 2002). Therefore these three costs are considered in this chapter. One has however to keep in mind that the degree of confidence varies between these three costs. Whereas accident costs, like property damage, can be calculated quite precisely, climate change costs are less certain. For this reason a very conservative approach has been applied which is discussed in more detail throughout this section. The literature suggests several techniques to quantify and monetise external effects of motor vehicle transport such as damage cost method, control or prevention cost method, hedonic compared to contingent valuation method. These methods are described in detail in Bruce (1995), Himmel (1999), Litman (2002). None of these methods can be used to estimate all motor vehicle related external costs without uncertainties. For each impact a different approach according to its nature has therefore been applied and uncertainties stated which has likewise been done in Becker (2001), Litman (2002), Maddison (1996) or Maibach (2002).
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12225888
Eight people have died in the crash and State Highway 1 is expected to be closed for some hours.
NEW ZEALAND
State Highway 1 closed north of Taupō; motorists urged to use detours