Police getting tougher on speed tolerance

[Swoop]

Of course they were going to express offence, their policy of strict enforcement has been a complete failure.

The public should demand a change of tack here. Obviously targeting speed is an absolute failure.
Driver education.
Getting bad habits OUT of drivers (not using seatbelts, cellphone use, failure to keep left, failure to indicate and failure TO STOP AT A FUCKING STOP SIGN OR RED LIGHT!) would be a start.

The faster you go... It is not about speed causing the accident!

The faster you go, the sooner you get there.
You also get off the road sooner so reducing your exposure to harm on the roads.

There. We can both spout factual crap.

It isn't hard to understand.

I'll give you 3 choices
1 - high speed impact
2 - lower speed impact
3 - no impact.

I prefer #3 myself.

The best option, but one which the retards in power fail to comprehend.


Anyone taking bets on what the gubbinment's approach to THE CARNAGE!!! on the roads (shock, horror sex, probe! - more details on page 3 of today's news)?
I'm betting a rinse & repeat, and we all know how successful that is...

[buggerit]

The years road toll is a very blunt instrument if you want a true picture of general road safety

A few figures from MOT govt site:

light motor vehicles on road.

2000 2.5 million
2010 3.1 million
2017 3.8 million

km travelled by light vehicle fleet

2000 3.6 billion
2010 4.0 billion
2017 4.8 billion


So comparing total years road toll without taking anything else into consideration makes no sense.
MOT figures show year on year less deaths per km driven but I spose thst doesn't sell newspapers
or provide the govt with a stick to beat the motorists with.

[FJRider]

It isn't hard to understand.

I think more(some) effort should be put in to avoiding the impact, not just lessening the consequence of an impact. The main message about driving, in particular holiday period driving, focuses on speed and reducing it to lessen the death and mayhem "when" an impact happens?

The provisional figures for 2018 show fatalities are made up of the following demographics:

My thoughts and questions on these figures in brackets ...


49 per cent were the driver of the vehicle and 24 per cent were passengers. (Is it safer to be a passenger than a driver .. ??? )

14 per cent were motorbike riders or pillion passengers. (Less likely to die in a road accident maybe .. ???)

11 per cent were pedestrians. (Roads are not safe even for pedestrians-is this a speed issue.. ???)

Just over one per cent were cyclists. (NO license required. Enough said .. ???)

66 per cent were male and 34 per cent were female. (Not all men are dangerous ... only 66% are .. ???)

28 per cent were in the sixty-plus age group. (So ...oldies aren't the big issue after all .. ???)

14 per cent were children or teenagers. (The children may just be collateral damage on the road, but don't people think the kids you kill might be your own .. ??? teenagers ideas of right and wrong might need changing. ??? or am I just showing my age .. ???)

13 per cent were aged between 20 and 24 years. (Elderly children and teenagers ... 'nuff said)

48 per cent died in crashes on the open road on state highways. (Obviously ... 52% die in built up areas. Thus ... is speed really the issue in these areas or should urban speed limits simply be lowered .. ???)

The region with the largest share of fatalities was Waikato at 17 per cent; followed by Auckland and Canterbury with 14 per cent each; and Manawatu/Wanganui on 12 per cent. (Will the millions of $$$ on Waikato Motorways improve these figures .. ??? Nothing said about the safest region .. ??)

[AllanB]

Interesting stats and personal comments there thanks.

Stats are interesting. 11% of road deaths pedestrians - presumably a very high percentage of these deaths were in built up areas (as I fail to see a lot of pedestrians on the open road). Clearly the government need to have some type of ACC charge on walking within build up areas.


Do Lime scooter deaths count as road deaths?

[speedpro]

"49 per cent were the driver of the vehicle and 24 per cent were passengers. (Is it safer to be a passenger than a driver .. ??? )"

As somebody said - " Lies, damned lies, and statistics", or something like that.

The above, and the other stats in the original post are all completely meaningless without knowing other pertinent information. In this case, how many crashed vehicles even had a passenger? Obviously all the vehicles had a driver. If every vehicle also had a passenger then obviously it is safer to be in the passenger seat. Clearly not every crashed vehicle had a passenger, but other crashed vehicles had multiple passengers.
Given the relative numbers of cars and motorcycles the 14% for motorcyclists is a horror stat.
The numbers dying on the open road versus urban roads needs to be considered in conjunction with the % of vehicle distance traveled in the 2 environments. I would suggest that the vehicle fleet does a lot more distance in suburbia, simply by weight of numbers of vehicles being used in suburbia, versus the open road. Assuming that I'm not totally wrong on that then the open road 48% is pretty poor. Maybe open road speeds need to be lowered to be the same as urban roads.
The following post with "year on year less deaths per km driven" is pretty much what I was thinking but hadn't looked up the numbers.
Interesting numbers in both posts but the simplistic interpretation by those in authority is starting to annoy me, not to mention the mindless regurgitating of the various mantras, "speed kills" etc.

[speedpro]

There will of course be lots of hand wringing, something this government is very good at. Various officials will bless us with their disappointment and let us know how the message just isn't getting through, all supported by reference to the total road toll. There will of course be no mention of fleet distance traveled or other important and relevant information. A new improved road safety campaign will be rolled out in the new year, loosely based on targeting drivers doing slightly over the posted limit on long straight divided roads.

Possibly an Albert Einstein quote - "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”

This thread was originally from 2015(?). Started November 2014. Has there been any new initiatives aimed at the causes of the crashes since then? I mean proper long term ongoing serious initiatives.

[OddDuck]

Yep. Rinse and repeat.

In the meantime if you look at what's actually killing Kiwis in droves you realise how myopic the hysteria about the road toll really is. Yeah the road toll is a problem. There's no way it's as big a problem as people sitting on the couch in front of a screen while overeating. Or simply being lonely.

[Hugo Nougo]

Interesting numbers in both posts but the simplistic interpretation by those in authority is starting to annoy me, not to mention the mindless regurgitating of the various mantras, "speed kills" etc.

yup, weve all had this conversation before, this was posted a while back in another post and is as close to real usable stats that ive seen.

https://assets.publishing.service.go...cgb2011-04.pdf

no surprise that driver error is the consistent issue.

[speedpro]

From a story today:
"The Automobile Association's road safety spokesman, Dylan Thomsen, said its research had found about half of fatal crashes involved extreme and reckless behaviour; the rest tended to involve everyday drivers making mistakes or bad decisions."
Another death was an elderly gentleman single vehicle crash here in Auckland. I'm thinking medical event resulting in a crash. If so more of a medical issue that motor vehicle. If he had been sitting having a coffee would it have been reported as a coffee related death. This is another thing that winds me up - collecting scarcely related events and including them in stats. If i was to die of a heart attack while driving to work, unless I managed to safely park the car before passing away, I would be recorded as another statistic in the road toll.

[Scuba_Steve]

From a story today:
"The Automobile Association's road safety spokesman, Dylan Thomsen, said its research had found about half of fatal crashes involved extreme and reckless behaviour; the rest tended to involve everyday drivers making mistakes or bad decisions."
Another death was an elderly gentleman single vehicle crash here in Auckland. I'm thinking medical event resulting in a crash. If so more of a medical issue that motor vehicle. If he had been sitting having a coffee would it have been reported as a coffee related death. This is another thing that winds me up - collecting scarcely related events and including them in stats. If i was to die of a heart attack while driving to work, unless I managed to safely park the car before passing away, I would be recorded as another statistic in the road toll.

maybee not?
They do claim - "Medical events were not counted in the official figures, but death within 30 days of a crash would be included."

[Swoop]

So comparing total years road toll without taking anything else into consideration makes no sense... I spose thst doesn't sell newspapers

As the saying goes "if it bleeds, it leads"...

My thoughts and questions on these figures in brackets ...

Good post!
Something relevant that politicians (and media) should take into consideration.

Possibly an Albert Einstein quote - "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”

That defines the police approach rather succinctly...

[slofox]

So comparing total years road toll without taking anything else into consideration makes no sense.
MOT figures show year on year less deaths per km driven but I spose thst doesn't sell newspapers
or provide the govt with a stick to beat the motorists with.

I think you're right on there. Let's having something meaningful.

[pritch]

maybee not?
They do claim - "Medical events were not counted in the official figures, but death within 30 days of a crash would be included."

I think that means more realistically that medical events are just not considered at all.

[FJRider]

I think that means more realistically that medical events are just not considered at all.

Unless you count heart attacks as accidents. But that may be viewed differently if another vehicle is involved ... either to cause the heart attack ... as collateral damage during/after the heart attack ... or if the heart attack occurs as the result of the accident.

[pritch]

Unless you count heart attacks as accidents.

I don't, but suspect they do. Two incidents I can recall suggest that. There was a fatal single vehicle accident involving a solo rider on a BMW 650 in the Waikato. It was treated more as a mystery than a potential health event.

Last year there was a dual fatality head-on near here. Police said it was a mystery: straight road, daylight, fine weather. No mention of the ages of the female drivers, eighty something and ninety. My guess? A medical emergency for one driver coupled with target fixation on the part of the other. How that got recorded in the statistics though God knows.