I am an evil endangered minority
Being critical of the official administration's policies on “road safety”, one runs the risk of being labeled a baby killer, Holocaust denier or Justin Bieber fan. Perhaps all three.
But what the heck. I think that the New Zealand motoring public is being incrementally marginalised while the real villians and killers of road users go unaddressed.
I believe that the real villian is driver inattention, but more on that later.
The most obvious remedy I believe is ongoing driver training and education. This also most obvious omission from the official administration's current road safety programme.
While it's still fresh in my mind, I'd like to raise the issue of zero-tolerance speed limit enforcement, particularly now it being lauded by the Police for being a resounding success over this past Queen's Birthday weekend.
One road-related death at Queen's Birthday. I hesitate to use the term “accident” as it implies that there are Evil Forces(TM) afoot beyond the influence of the operators of motor vehicles that somehow mysteriously conspire to maim or kill. More on “dangerous roads” later.
New Zealand's road toll currently runs at about 380 a year. To make the maths a bit easier, let's call that one a day or 365 a year.
That means that for a three-day holiday weekend, not allowing for increased traffic flows and other matters, the “toll” should statistically be three. A five-day Easter break should be five, and for a 10-day Christmas/New Year break, it should be 10. The margin of error is probably about one or two either way.
12 deaths over an Easter is higher than average. One death for a Queen's Birthday weekend is lower than average. One holiday weekend on its own does not a trend make. Therefore trying to claim “success” for one particular contributor to road safety is,I believe, drawing a very long bow indeed.
Traffic safety zealots (one hesitates to use the N word from fear of Godwin's Law) believe that road deaths can be eliminated. They believe this can be done through safer vehicles and safer roads. They are fools. Fools who have never heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns or of human falibility.
“One death is too many,” they argue. Who, other then some sort of god-hating, mother-beating, apple-pie-intolerant deadhead could argue an opposing view?
Such a position is tantamount to the “Who isn't with us is against us” slant on the US's “war” on terrorism made famous by President George W Bush. It implies that the only solution to a problem is the one that is officially sanctioned.
Even though they may not say so in as many words, most people accept that there is an inherent risk associated with travel. If they didn't, people would never go anywhere.
I believe that what the New Zealand electorate needs to determine is an acceptable level of road-related deaths and injuries. Given that zero is a farcical impossibility, despite the best intentions of the zealots, then why can't such a level be set? Why can't that level be set at a point that doesn't require facile measures to be implemented, such as 70kmh open road speed limits, no overtaking anywhere ever, nobody younger than 25 allowed to be in control of a motor vehicle, and travel by permit only at weekends and during national holidays.
Unfortunately in our society, the wishes of a few often outweigh the needs of the many. Vaccination, fluoride, 1080, road safety, alcohol, criminal justice, All Black selections. I doubt that any government would have the stomach for such a discussion or for setting a level which, I suspect, is somewhere about 300 deaths a year. As this number falls, the costs associated with bringing it down go up.
Heaven forbid that we ever have to consider the competence of operators of motor vehicles, or the effects that alcohol and similar mind-altering substances may have on them. That's way too easy, unnecessary or irrelevant, apparently.
So rather than implementing measures that actually make a difference we are instead to be ground down by a myriad of the facile and the inane.
“Don't cross the centreline,” we are told. Fair enough, but that surely is a matter of time and place? The poster child of the Police's campaign against evil killers last week was SH3 through the Manawatu Gorge. A windy road, no question. But a winding road that has, in several places, stretches where a driver has a clear line of sight through a sequence of corners and who can choose to straighten the road out without any danger whatsoever.
To suggest otherwise, as the Police endeavoured to do last week, is beyond farce, even if some zealot has had the whole length of this stretch of road double-yellow-lined. More troubling is that the utterers of this “news” appear to believe what they are saying. Even more troubling is that the media swallows all of this without question and, in the case of the Dominion Post's editorial this morning, be calling for even more.
Zealots believe that there are such things as dangerous roads. Apart from roads made unsafe by unmarked hazards (such as diesel, stock effluent, pea gravel, livestock, small children) or the unexpected absence of roads (such as through washouts, avalanches), I argue that there is no such thing as a dangerous road. The real danger is generally created by the inability of a motor vehicle operator to cope with surprise, often exacerbated by things like following distance, mind-altering substances, or by having to use the wheel or pedals to impose one's will on the vehicle itself.
I believe that removing road information signage (apart from that which identifies hazards, as noted above) would have a significant positive benefit on road safety for no other reason than drivers would have to concentrate harder on what they're doing, rather than making assumptions or taking no actions at all.
The money saved from unnecessarily modifying roads could be better spent on ongoing driver training and education.
As long as people are trusted with the operation of motor vehicles, there will be “accidents”. Even with the best will in the world, we could all drop dead at any moment. People already do this while driving cars. Even Denny Hulme did it. Who knows, even I may do it.
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Originally Posted by Hitcher
Perhaps the public get behind it as those at fault often take the innocent with them, which is fair enough, negligence causing death. Regardless of how many tickets are issued, we still have two tonnes of metal being propelled at 27m/s under the control of complete fucking morons, and this is legal; until training sorts that out, there will never be a 0 road toll.
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