Source: Radio New Zealand
Police and experts say it is not just excessive speed contributing to a recent uptick in fatal road crashes, but motorists’ poor attitudes to driving and lack of training.
In the 10 days from 20 April, 18 people were killed in 14 separate crashes, with preliminary findings showing 16 of the 18 deaths occurred on open roads with 100km/h speed limits and no traffic safety barriers.
The annual road toll is already trending higher this year than for 2025, despite fuel costing considerably more.
Police director of road policing Inspector Peter McKennie told Nine to Noon on Monday it was impractical and prohibitively expensive to put safety barriers on every high-speed road in the country, so drivers needed to pay more attention to their own actions and surroundings.
“We need people to focus on their driving 100 percent of the time, and 100 percent focus. And if they’re distracted by anything, be it because they’re feeling tired or got some impairment or they’re distracted by their phone, then their focus isn’t going to be there.
“And when you consider something can happen without warning in front of you, need to be able to drive in a manner and with a focus that enables you to respond safely to that. And there’s a growing body of international evidence indicating that the hands-free technology, including that built into your car, is just as distracting as actually holding onto your mobile phone and talking on it.”
Emergency services at the scene of a crash in rural Wellington on 25 March. RNZ / Mark Papalii
While speed was not a factor in every accident, speed often determines the outcomes – as the police used to say in their marketing, ‘the faster you go, the bigger the mess’.
“There’s some challenges in terms of speed limits,” McKennie said.
“I mean, we’ve had the speed limits we’ve had in New Zealand for many, many decades now, and people have become accustomed to them. And it’s challenging to change and really it needs a mandate to change. And the public to date have largely said they want to keep travelling at the speeds they are.
“But when you compare us to the likes of Norway, which has some of the safest roads in the world, you can’t put a speed limit in place higher than 80kmh/h unless barriers are in place. But again, it’s a big challenge to actually change to that sort of model.”
He noted it was not up to police to set speed limits. The coalition this term has reversed some speed reductions out in place by previous governments.
“Probably what I’d do is just encourage people to just have a think about it, perhaps see what’s happening overseas, see what the differences are, because certainly New Zealand police is delivering world-leading levels of road safety enforcement for the things that matter, the things that impact on people getting killed on the roads. And it is literally world-leading, comparable to that in Norway,” McKennie said.
“But… what are the different factors in place in New Zealand? And part of it is our environment. You know, it’s the windy, torturous roads and that sort of thing. They’re unforgiving”
When safety features backfire
Bruce Wilson, who worked for 16 years as a police officer, specialising in road policing and investigated over 1000 crashes, now runs Forensic Crash Consultancy, which provides independent expert advice on the causes of road crashes.
He said drivers were too reliant on cars’ safety features and undertrained on what to do in dangerous situations.
“New Zealand drivers have an overconfidence [which] leads to a lot of drivers – especially overconfidence in their vehicle being flash and having all the systems on board, but also just overconfidence in our ability. We’re simply not taught how to drive anything apart from putting it in ‘D for dummy’ and driving from A to B. We’re not taught how to react in a situation.”
He said many modern vehicles had safety features – such as anti-lock brakes – which required a completely different response from the driver to work, than what many would have learned when they were younger.
“I’m 50 years of age. When I was taught to drive vehicles didn’t have anti-lock brakes and stability control, a lot of those other safety systems. And we had this message pushed to us that we’ve got to buy the safest car and have the safest system on board. But we’re becoming too reliant on that. And that’s what’s been seen both in New Zealand and overseas. We simply don’t understand how our modern car can actually protect us…
“In my generation, if our car was starting to spin or rotate, we were taught to steer into the skid to try and control it. In a vehicle with stability control, that is the worst thing you want to do because the car can obtain grip and give you more steering ability. So you will actually steer off into the hazard instead of modern driver training…
“Or anti-lock brakes. A lot of people panic. How many people have actually driven their car and had their anti-lock brakes go off? Because in the majority of vehicles, your brake pedal falls to the floor. People panic. They take the foot off the brake and now suddenly the car’s not braking instead of keeping that foot flat to the floor so the car can do its job to try and keep you safe.”
He said a lot of New Zealand’s roads were not suitable for high speed limits.
“But instead of just focusing on setting the speed limit, what we need to be doing is empowering our drivers to understand what a safe speed is to travel at.
“The speed limit is a limit, it’s not a target, and that’s unfortunately how we treat it in New Zealand. But if we’re driving along the road, we need to give them the skills and the knowledge to know that at this time, ‘I need to have a little bit of a buffer. I need to be traveling a little bit slower. Just because I can do the corner at 80km/h doesn’t mean I need to do the corner at 80km/h.’
“So applying speed limits with a blanket approach, I don’t think is the correct way to do it. We need to actually look at the facts and evidence, and that’s where we come back to that good-quality crash investigation. So the facts can be used to make better, more solid decisions instead of just blanket application of speed limit reductions. “
‘Angry and responsive’
Wilson said the high number of crashes when it might be expected fewer drivers were on the road could be down to stress, noting a similar trend during Covid.
“I find New Zealand drivers to be rather angry and responsive… I spent three weeks driving around the US where they have their own concerns and issues with their crash rate, but [are] a lot more polite…
“So yeah, that anger behind the wheel, it’s again that just focus or that fixation on getting somewhere in the shortest period of time instead of actually looking at the journey and getting there in your little stages and steps, focusing too much on, ‘I need to get here because I’ve got to get back to work,’ or, ‘I’ve got to get to work,’ and all those sorts of other factors that are coming into it. And it does lead into it, you know, we need to drive relaxed. We need to drive focused.”
“Yeah, it’s not necessarily just anger,” McKennie added. “It’s what else is on your mind… You just need to focus on the road, focus on driving safely. Don’t let other things distract you. If you feel your mind wandering, stop and have a break.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand