COMPLACENCY AS NEW ZEALAND ROAD STATISTICS ARE GREATER THAN WORLD AIRLINE FATALITIES

February 9, 2016

While the world reels in horror each time there is an aircraft crash and people are killed with families aching with grief, we seem to be complacent when many hundreds of people are killed on our roads.

According to statistics for 2016, around the world, there were 19 airline crashes during the twelve month period, which took 305 lives.

On the other hand, total deaths on New Zealand roads claimed 328 lives – more than the total deaths from airline crashes worldwide.

Deaths on New Zealand roads are a national tragedy, increasing almost 12% since 2014.

“Yet we don’t see our government calling for much more effective youth road safety education. Nor are we seeing any policy changes that could give effect to this” said NZ Programme Manager, Maria Lovelock of national not for profit organisation, Road Safety Education Limited (RSE).

RSE is intent on reducing road trauma among young drivers, by educating high school students through its highly acclaimed RYDA programme, which provides powerful workshops to change the way young people think about road safety.

RSE has strong support from corporate partners BOC, NZ Steel, Bosch and Bridgestone, along with Rotary Clubs, whose volunteers co-ordinate the programme in their local area.

“This is where it all begins…. Educating young people in senior high school. Getting behind the wheel of a car is probably the most dangerous thing a young person will ever do in their lives. Effective education should be a mandatory part of any person’s education. Effective education is the key and can lead to reduced burden on our health system and imperative in reducing tragedy for Kiwi families.

“Despite the fact that nearly one person dies every day on our roads and over 20 will suffer injuries each day, which will affect the rest of their lives, there is simply not the urgency from many governments that this crisis warrants”.

Quite aside from helping alleviate the grief of family after family, effective action by governments would reduce the current burden on our health services and combined community, amounting to billions each and every year.

“This is a clear opportunity for the government to further support road safety education proven to be effective through the RYDA programme,” said Lovelock. RYDA reaches only 10% of New Zealand High schools. This is to be contrasted with the much lower per capita road trauma in Australia it is run in nearly 25% of schools and in New South Wales for example, half of NSW schools participate in RYDA. While youth road deaths have decreased significantly over the past decade, unfortunately in the last two years there was a 31% spike in this area. In New Zealand we have 13.2 young people die per 100,000. If New Zealand could achieve the Australian fatality rate of 8.8 per 100,000 population, only 53 lives would be lost and 27 young lives would be saved nationally. “ However the loss of a single young life is one too many and the impact these crashes have on friends, families and communities is a national tragedy" says Lovelock.

It is a national tragedy that 80 young people lost their lives on the road in the past 12 months.

© Scoop Media