The increased 2022 road toll is not bad luck, but bad management, says the car review website dogandlemon.

Editor Clive Matthew-Wilson, who is an outspoken road safety campaigner, says:

“The government’s attempt to reduce road deaths through mass speed limit reductions has been a dismal failure. The police and politicians can duck and weave all they like, but the fact remains: the road toll rose significantly after one of the biggest blanket speed reductions in the country’s history.”

“The results speak for themselves: there have been hundreds of speed limit reductions around the country. If reducing speed limits resulted in less road deaths, the road toll would have dropped like a stone. In fact, the opposite occurred: the provisional 2022 road toll leapt from 318 in 2021 to 373 in 2022.”

Matthew-Wilson points out that the same thing happened in the Auckland region, which has had multiple, enforced speed reductions over 39% of the road network since 2020.

“Far from reducing casualties, the number of deaths also rose. In 2019, there were 42 road deaths in the Auckland region. The speed limit was lowered in 2020. In 2022 there were 54 deaths, five down from the year before, but far higher than before the speed limits were reduced.”

“Auckland Transport has had the cheek to claim that there was a reduction in deaths and injuries on the roads where the speeds were reduced. What they don’t mention is that these speed limit reductions occurred during the middle of the 2020 Covid lockdown, which halted most private car use and caused the road toll to plummet nationally. As soon as the Covid restrictions were lifted, Auckland’s road toll rocketed back up, to higher levels than before the speed limit restrictions were imposed.”

“The sad reality is that the country’s road deaths and injuries increased because the authorities focussed on the speed of the average driver. This was never going to work because the average driver is not the problem, nor is speed the primary cause of most accidents. That’s not my opinion; that’s the conclusion of the government’s own studies.”

“According to the Ministry of Transport, speed is the primary cause of just 15% of fatalities, and almost all these speed-related fatalities involve yobbos[1], blotto drivers or reckless motorcyclists.”

“This group typically ignores speed signs, speed cameras and road safety messages. Think of the kids ram-raiding at present: you could drop every speed limit in Aotearoa to 10km, and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the way these idiots behave.”

"The proof that bad roads, rather than speed, are the problem, is the Waikato Expressway. The Waikato Expressway has one of the highest speed limits in the country, yet it’s also one of the safest roads in the country.”

“Speed is never safe or unsafe; it’s merely appropriate or inappropriate to the conditions. On a racetrack,150kp/h might be safe. Around children, 15kp/h may be too fast."

“Sadly, the Waikato Expressway, which is a properly-built highway, is the exception to the rule in the Waikato region. Most Waikato roads are crap. That’s why the Waikato road toll is so high.”

“The main reason these roads are crap is because they’re badly built and poorly maintained. The main reason these roads are badly built and poorly maintained is because of trucks. Trucks cause 80% of road damage but pay less than a quarter of the cost of road construction and repair.”

“About 20% of the road toll involves trucks. So, trucks are actually a far greater menace on our roads than speeding drivers.”

“Trucking companies are effectively heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. As a result, trucking companies get rich while our Third World roads kill multiple innocent people annually. Many of the worst accidents of 2022 were caused by a simple lack of a median barrier and many of these accidents involved commercial trucks.”

Matthew-Wilson gave the example of the seven people killed in June after a van crashed into a truck on State Highway 1 south of Picton.

“This family were not speeding. They could have been travelling at half the speed and they would still have been annihilated.”

In a separate accident in November, three members of one family were killed in a head-on collision with a truck.

“No one has suggested these families were speeding. They simply made a simple mistake that cost them their lives.”

Matthew-Wilson says that changing the roads (rather than merely reducing speeds) is proven and immediately effective.

“The Centential Highway near Wellington went from being one of the most dangerous roads in the country to one of the safest. The main change was a simple median barrier that stopped cars colliding head-on”

“Between 2005 and October 2015, the Centennial Highway barrier was hit over 100 times without a single death.”

A study by Monash University of the effectiveness of roadside fencing and median barriers concluded that: “reductions of up to 90% in death and serious injury can be achieved, with no evidence of increased road trauma for motorcyclists.”

Matthew-Wilson repeats: “If the trucking industry paid their share of the costs of road construction and repair, there would be ample funds to build and maintain a safe national roading network.”

Matthew-Wilson is also highly critical of the way that the police heavily enforce speed limits, but “barely enforce" other road laws.

“Why is the road toll so high? Simple: in many cases the police were so busy handing out speeding tickets that they weren’t enforcing the laws on seatbelt wearing and cellphone use..”

Matthew-Wilson says much of the pressure to lower speed limits came from the Greens.

“I support many of the Greens’ principles, but the fact is: the Greens’ policies on cars were created by and for middle-class liberals living in safe urban environments. In these safe urban environments, these Greens can safely walk, bike and take public transport. By comparison, most of Aotearoa has a small population spread over a large area. Outside of cities, most of the country has little or no public transport. The simple reality is that mass car travel is virtually unavoidable.”

“Despite what media suggests, few motorists have a problem with speed limits being lowered in high risk areas. But lowered speed limits should never be used merely to punish people who have no choice but to drive.”

Matthew-Wilson adds that it’s hypocritical for the Greens to support lowered speed limits as a means of reducing emissions while also supporting urban congestion charges.

“Urban congestion charges effectively encourage wealthy people to drive gas-guzzlers into polluted cities. This is just wrong.”

Matthew-Wilson has a warning for the government:

“Reduced speed limits haven’t lowered the road toll, but this ‘Mother knows best' policy has alienated hundreds of thousands of ordinary motorists. If the government continues on its present path, it will be annihilated at the next election.”

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