Road safety to 2010

Foreword

I am pleased to present the government’s Road Safety to 2010 strategy, which aims to reduce road casualties to no more than 300 deaths and 4,500 hospitalisations a year by 2010. The goal is ambitious, but I know it is achievable through action in each of:

engineering
education
enforcement.

Some new activities reflecting this balanced approach are already underway; others will be announced in the near future. There are cost–effective ways to implement the strategy, and I know it has wide community support.

This strategy embodies the aims of the New Zealand Transport Strategy and underpins it in the area of road safety. Road Safety to 2010 will contribute to an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive and sustainable transport system by increasing the safety of all road users.

Previous National Road Safety Plans played an important part in reducing deaths from 729 in 1990 to 404 in 2002. The road safety activities developed under those plans will stay in place, but will be reinforced by the new and intensified actions in this strategy. Most deaths and injuries occur when road users operate outside the safe design limits of the road network. We need to continue our focus on improving road user behaviour by means of education and enforcement. However we also need to focus on the entire road environment. We need to improve vehicle and road design and construction to better accommodate human error. This will enable us to maintain the encouraging downward trend in road crashes, deaths and serious injuries.

The Road Safety Strategy 2010 consultation document was released late in 2000 to promote discussion and obtain the community’s views on a road safety strategy for the coming decade. This document, Road Safety to 2010, responds to
the community’s call for safer roads with a mix of engineering, education and enforcement programmes, and was developed with the assistance and full support of the National Road Safety Committee (NRSC). The NRSC comprises the chief executives of the Accident Compensation Corporation, the Land Transport Safety Authority (LTSA), Local Government New Zealand, the Ministry of Transport, New Zealand Police, Transfund New Zealand and Transit New Zealand, and is chaired by the LTSA.

The implementation schedule released with this document describes how the NRSC member organisations aim to achieve the strategy’s initial 2004 targets, with significant effort going into engineering to develop a safer and more forgiving road network and new education programmes to raise road safety knowledge and awareness.

But we will also have to introduce highly effective new road policing measures if we are to achieve our 2010 goals. I see no reason why we should tolerate behaviour that imposes an unacceptable risk of injury or death on other citizens going about their daily lives.

Achieving our new road safety goal will depend on the commitment and efforts of central and local government, communities, organisations, families and individuals throughout New Zealand. Everyone has a part to play in the strategy and I commend it to you.

Hon Paul Swain
Minister of Transport
October 2003

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Page created: 17 October 2003