Region's roads 2008 - more dangerous
2008 was marked by an increase in road casualties in the Wellington region, according to Greater Wellington’s annual transport monitoring report.
Twenty-one people died on the region’s roads in 2008, up from 15 the previous year, serious casualties increased from 345 in 2007 to 355 last year, and cyclist casualties reached 149 in 2008 – almost the same as 2007’s record high of 150.
The report shows how the region is performing in terms of targets set by the Regional Land Transport Strategy.
Fran Wilde, Chair of Greater Wellington regional council and the Regional Transport Committee, said the road safety statistics were, again, shocking.
“A study we commissioned last year, in response to the dreadful 2007 statistics, found that a range of factors were contributing to the high number of deaths and injuries on our roads. There were no major surprises and a number of the issues are ones that can be addressed only by central government, so we have made our views known on them, as well as making appropriate changes locally.”
A working party of staff from the NZ Transport Agency, Greater Wellington, Wellington City Council and the Police investigated the statistics and found that:
- Fatal and serious crashes have increased well above the rates of travel and population, indicating that the region’s road safety is getting worse
- Human factors, such as failure to give way, travelling too fast, poor judgement, are the common causal factors of reported crashes
- Nearly one third of crashes involve 15 to 24 year olds, well above their proportion of the population
- Alcohol and speed remain very significant factors in fatal and serious crashes, particularly involving males up to 49 years of age
- Cyclist crashes are increasing
- A recent increase in the use of motorcycles and mopeds correlates to a similar rise in fatal and serious crashes involving riders of those vehicles
- The average age of the vehicle fleet has risen steadily to more than 12 years of age, meaning that the adoption of safer vehicle technologies is relatively slow
- Sixty-three percent of injury crashes occurred on local urban roads
The new Regional Road Safety Plan contains changes the regional transport committee would like to see at the national level, such as lowering the legal blood alcohol limit, reducing the average age of vehicles and greater restrictions on inexperienced drivers. The plan also identifies a number of specific local initiatives that could make our roads safer. These include skills training for cyclists, motorcyclists and inexperienced drivers, speed reductions in some urban areas, greater use of local red light cameras and speed cameras, and targeting driver fatigue.
“I sincerely hope that our new regional road safety plan, adopted by the transport committee recently, along with the new ban on using cell phones in vehicles, will help turn these statistics around,” says Fran Wilde.
The committee has also recently adopted the Regional Travel Demand Management Plan, aimed at improving people’s travel choices and getting the most benefit from the region’s existing transport system.
For more information, please contact:Fran Wilde, 021 888 075