More Pied Piper Porkies from LTNZ

Joint Media Release, Candor Trust and Akilla Sleep Safety

Failure to give way at intersections is not the third largest cause of injury and death on New Zealand roads after driving at excessive speed and drunk driving, as LTNZ's Rachael Prince is now touting in the Gisbourne Herald.

This category of "intersection crashes" results in over 3000 injuries and 26 deaths which does not begin to qualify it for third place getter.

Injuries and deaths primarily caused by either drug intoxication or fatigue far outweigh the recorded crashes in New Zealand that are caused by the failure to give way.

Deaths featuring driving influenced by illicit drug use were over 140 in 2006 with 70 of these deaths visited upon the driver according to the NZ Police / ESR control of drink and drugged study.

Similar numbers of deaths are also attributable to fatigue behind the wheel. For more details about these sizeable risks see the Candor Trust and Akilla Fatigue websites.

The reason the NZ public is being fed nauseating disinformation regarding their road safety risks is that the New Zealand Road Safety program prohibits significant awareness raising about the risks not selected for targeted enforcement and revenue raising

Evidence of this is the correspondence from LTNZ to Akilla Sleep Safety Foundation in 2005, which categorically stated that major publicity campaigns will target only the selected risks.

LTNZ banned the word fatigue from use in a recent campaign so as not to dilute the impact of the chosen issues. Publicity about the true scope and risks of drug driving is also banned. Inattention and cellphone awareness likewise.

Further to this, new research has revealed that an important prong of the Enforcement based road safety package is to discourage publicity being disseminated by Government or Non Government ones if that publicity does not concern itself with speed, alcohol, seatbelts or intersections.

Not only do LTNZ constantly lie by omission as they devoutly follow the "no education without enforcement" religion, but in todays Herald they obviously lied outright about a matter of fact - which is not the ethical way to communicate the need for care at intersections.

New Zealand needs a Commission of Inquiry into the right of Government propagandists and zealots to lie frankly and furiously about important matters, when they believe it is in their interests to do so.

The media should also be more cynical when dealing with a source such a failed entity as LTNZ, and refuse to publish their spoonfed and dangerous spin unless matters alleged to be statistical facts are independently verified.

That is the standard applied to other sources - so why not to Land Transport NZ. Hopefully when LTNZ is dismantled and amalgamated with Tranzit that will be the end of the destructive Pied Piper approach to road safety education in this Country, emanating from an organisation that is intent on blindfolding the audience to overhalf of their real risks.

ENDS

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