Easter road toll was the worst in 16 years

[Genestho]

Provided the slow driver is competent. But they very seldom are. They take weird lines through corners, brake mid corner, slam on the brakes without any apparent reason, weave around on the road, do even stranger things. This means that following one is a test in concentration and reaction. Which is stressful and very tiring.

Good point there, I'm out of bling, sorry! Another reason I find to pull over, and remove myself and kids out of it.

[CookMySock]

If someone wants/needs to drive slowly then that's fine. If they have a classic vehicle, or are towing a trailer, driving a truck, learner driver etc then it's OK to drive slow. Just pull over, let people past and there is no problem. I get very pissed off when they refuse to pull over and feel that it's fine to block traffic due to their selfishness.

People don't have to get off the fucking road to let you through. They pay their RUC just like you do so so take a number. We aren't talking about slowbies at 75k, we are talking about ordinary citizens who choose to holiday at 90k and idiot "superior" drivers who prefer cruise at 120k and intimidate and harass anyone who gets in the way.

You are not in a position to call other people selfish when you demand right of way over them. You getting "very pissed off" is by far a greater danger on the road. Everything is not always someone elses' problem.

Steve

[Swoop]

Why do people feel the need to overtake, I wonder...could it be that they have been stuck behind Joe and Mabel travelling at 85 km/h for miles. Joe and Mabel are totally oblivious to the fact that there is a 2 k long tailback behind them

Jo & Mabel need their licence removed since thay have clearly shown that they do not use their mirrors.

Road safety is a joke here, the advise is slow down. Sometimes it's valid but if compulsory vehicle control was part of learning to drive I think there would be a lot fewer crashes.

Damned right! Bloody pathetic excuse for "driver training" in this country.

It all boils down to, the license system is defuntional, a license to drive is seen as a right, and not a priveledge, which it should be.
I know uncoordinated monkeys that have licenses, I know old blind pensioners that have licenses, I know people that used to ride elephants, that come to NZ, and EXPECT the right to drive.

Damned right, as well!

SO, it all comes back to EDUCATION!

The basic concept that has eluded the gubbinment regulators for too long.

Needs the worst add of the year AWARD !!! ( drivings in the blood) PHWWAA

Quite amazing HOW the car that crashed:
a: Stopped in mid-air, and then
b: Jumped sideways by several metres, prior to ending on its roof.

Check out the skidmarks...
Fucking apalling advert. Just remember that "speed kills" as well...

[SMOKEU]

People don't have to get off the fucking road to let you through. They pay their RUC just like you do so so take a number. We aren't talking about slowbies at 75k, we are talking about ordinary citizens who choose to holiday at 90k and idiot "superior" drivers who prefer cruise at 120k and intimidate and harass anyone who gets in the way.

You are not in a position to call other people selfish when you demand right of way over them. You getting "very pissed off" is by far a greater danger on the road. Everything is not always someone elses' problem.

Steve

Like I said before, pull over and let people past if you're driving below the speed limit and someone else is behind you if there is no place for them to safely overtake.

[allycatz]

Kiwi's being notorious DIY'ers, they make up the road rules as they go along!

[smoky]

People should just suck their guts in and STFU, just like they have to when their mrs angrily brow-beats them about something, or when they feel annoyed with their kids.

So you don’t believe in democracy? Or perhaps you think democracy is only useful once every three years? The rest of the time we STFU
Piss off ya limb wristed communist sympathiser, we don’t all live in dark ages some where in the back side of Te Teko.

Advances in this country have been petitioned for, fought for and argued for, you reap the rewards of generations of New Zealanders who stood up and demanded better pay, public holidays, national parks, better roads ............ bla bla bla. They didn’t SFTU and suck it in.

A lot of people now days forget what living in a free democratic country is all about, they cower and default to the powers to be, letting the powers to be assume a totalitarian role and dictate – government agencies, far from being public servants, play the role of government suppressors

Grow some balls man

[reemit]

All this crashin and dyin that is occurring, probably due to more vehicles on our roads, without more roads to accommodate.
Easy equation 2(vehicles)/K(roads)=2(crashin and dyin).. where K=constant. (mafs was never my strong point)
Its not really a gubbimint conspiracy as some would like to think, (or is it) ?

[smoky]

Its not really a gubbimint conspiracy as some would like to think, (or is it) ?

No it's not, but the government needs to be held accountable for taking our taxes from regos, road tax and fuel and using it else where for all these years. All the while traffic congestion was increasing and our more diverse population was introducing an even more diverse driving ability to our over subscribed road system

They need to be called to account for continuing to buckle to the big transport companies who continue to push for access for their massive over sized trucks that screw the roads to bits

Now they have the cheek to compare our fatality rate to parts of Ausy where the investment in roads means there are larger roads, more duel carriage ways, people are wealthier and therefore their cars are generally better, there landscape is flat with few corners or blind spots.............

And the police are trying to use the higher statistic to bash us on the head with more control, more cops, more double yellows, instead of admitting our roads are woeful and inadequate - and sadly, some of you are swallowing that kind of shyte

[Ixion]

Good point there, I'm out of bling, sorry! Another reason I find to pull over, and remove myself and kids out of it.

Pulling over doesn't work. Either (a)
you hang around by the roadside for two thirds of eternity while doddery cretin crawls away at a speed somewhat slower than glacial drift. Eventually you figure that DC must surely have succumbed to old age and extricate the bike from the cobwebs and creepers that have covered it during the wait. Then after 10 minutes of decent riding you come up behind a linee of cars crawling along - yep, they're all stuck behind DC. So now you,re worse off than ever, you have to get past the line of cars PLUS DC. Or,(b)
you eventually set off, and 5 minutes down the road find yourself stuck behind DC's retarded cousin Cletus who crawled past while you were waiting.

[scissorhands]

Anger is one letter short of danger.

My playground the Piha Road is full of drongoes nowadays, nothing you can do.

If cops ticketed slowbies, accidents would go down.....hmmm

[Drunken Monkey]

Fuck that's an annoying advert.

That ad only sucked when they cut out the part that showed it was Emma driving Robbie's car, and that's why they crashed.
Driving IS in the blood.
Don't let the chick drive.

[Genestho]

Pulling over doesn't work. Either (a)
you hang around by the roadside for two thirds of eternity while doddery cretin crawls away at a speed somewhat slower than glacial drift. Eventually you figure that DC must surely have succumbed to old age and extricate the bike from the cobwebs and creepers that have covered it during the wait. Then after 10 minutes of decent riding you come up behind a linee of cars crawling along - yep, they're all stuck behind DC. So now you,re worse off than ever, you have to get past the line of cars PLUS DC. Or,(b)
you eventually set off, and 5 minutes down the road find yourself stuck behind DC's retarded cousin Cletus who crawled past while you were waiting.

On the bike with an engine accompanied with a can that rattled windows, we barely had a problem getting anywhere, as a downchange in gears and cars would usually leave room to pass. which was responded with a toot and a wave back.

When driving - it works for me, because I've already accepted holiday traffic is slow or dangerous, I've learn't that when I feel my mindset change, I remove my family out of it.

I'm not worried if when we set off again the traffic is slow, because my mind set is clearer, sharper and relaxed for awhile, when it changes, we remove ourselves out of it again.

I can only try to do what I can in my car for my family, I don't fancy being instrumental in burying anyone [else] in my world, and I couldn't cope with killing or injurying someone elses loved one, I know the hurt well.

I know I can't control what's coming at me, that's upto 'you'

I have made submissions on other contributing factors which are just as important, but it is my belief that roadsafety is in the crux of driver mentality.

We don't own the roads, we temporarily borrow them alongside other users to get from A to B, legislation will not lower the road toll, when in general driver attitudes are in denial, and blame everyone and everything else for their actions. If we all contributed positively on the roads we wouldn't need legislation.

I don't understand why drivers can't leave earlier if you have to be somewhere on time, or allow extra time and have some patience, and yes vehicles holding up traffic need to be responsible too.

Be prepared to accept that in our beautiful country there are roads where traffic will always be slow through the holidays.

[Grubber]

The Easter road toll was the worst in 16 years, 10 deaths
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10636572

National Police Headquarters' Inspector John McClelland said many of the deaths had been preventable;
"I think there are people making bad decisions, particularly with overtaking - not allowing enough room to get past vehicles and things like that,"
When you read the reports on the accidents, you’ll see the majority of deaths occurred with overtaking, or with poor road conditions, one was a foreigner trying to overtake a truck with on coming traffic.
Yet the dumb arse police in the country ignore the obvious and trot out the ol message they are pre programmed to default to;
"There've been a few fatalities involving suspected speed and alcohol”
Note the word ‘suspected’ but no facts

Isn’t any accident unintentional and generally the result of a poor decision?
Wouldn’t you expect any accident when overtaking to involve speed?

Rather than state the moronic obvious shouldn’t they be investigating the contributing factors and the criticality of those factors?
Surely the most critical cause of most of these accidents is the fact we have shit roads that have only a very limited provision for safely overtaking – unlike most developed countries?
We have campervans, old people, Asian drivers, tourists, huge trucks, too many trucks, more trucks all clogging up our so called state highways and main arterial routes (not picking on trucks, but the single carriage way they block up) frustrating the hell out of average motorists, who end up taking unacceptable risks to get past.

I would back the police when they implore us to be patient on the roads and to make better choices – if they were also lobbying the powers to be about creating more room on our roads for overtaking, if they would also stop their wanky pathetic practice of ticketing traffic for speeding when they use what few overtaking lanes there are.
The Police are short sited and moronic in thinking the sole answer is to slow down and be patient! It won’t be long before they have covered the entire state highway 1 with double yellows (no overtaking at all) and reduced the speed limit to 80.

They should remove their heads from their over stuffed colons and help increase the quality and safety of our roads, rather than fall back on lame one liners like “speed kills”

My sentiments exactly. There will always be a percentage of Morons. Thats' never going to change. We need to make roads more user friendly before we make any headway into stopping deaths. Need to give the morons more room. Look at the crash stats in the USA and see what makes their deaths lower than ours per capita. It's the wide open roads that help.

[swbarnett]

We don't own the roads,

Actually, we do. We ALL do. I think part of the problem is that both fast and slow drivers don't recognise that the other drivers also own the road and have an equal right to use them.

[swbarnett]

We don't own the roads,

Actually, we do. We ALL do. I think part of the problem is that both fast and slow drivers don't recognise that the other drivers also own the road and have an equal right to use them.