Tracking New Zealand’s road safety performance

“People make mistakes, but we have to stop viewing these road deaths as inevitable.”

A new regional road crash dashboard and factsheets make it easier for communities to understand their year-on-year road safety trends and monitor their performance.

The Ministry of Transport’s new sub-regional dashboard captures the annual crash data for deaths and serious injuries across the country going back 27 years in an interactive format.
New road safety factsheets reporting on different crash types (cycling, fatigue, young drivers etc.) are also available.

The new resources make it easy to access long-term information at a national and regional level, including the numbers of deaths and serious injuries, proportions of deaths and injuries by road user type (drivers, pedestrians, cyclists etc.), and ages of those killed or injured in serious crashes.

For example, at a national level, for the past 5 years (2013 -to 2017)
• 1,500 people were killed –and the numbers have increased over the past five years at an unprecedented level
• 57 of those killed were children under the age of 16, a further 167 were aged 15-19
• Nearly 40% of those killed were not driving (they were cycling, walking, passenger etc.)
• Losing control, driving too fast for conditions, alcohol and drugs, and failing to keep left were the top four factors contributing to serious crashes.

Users are able to analyse this and other data at a regional level to help them to understand some of the issues specific to their region.

The dashboard builds on the annual crash statement 2017 and we will continue to add further detail into the dashboards in the New Year.

The Ministry of Transport and partners are working to develop a new road safety strategy for New Zealand, with the clear ambition of reducing the trauma on our roads. As the dashboard shows, it is a complex problem, and there is no simple solution.

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