A review of road safety measures announced today by the government could mean a new type of speed camera - as well as increased safety requirements for cars and other measures - could be in place by 2020.
Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter today announced the government's ambitious new road safety strategy, which has an overall target of reducing road deaths to zero, and involves looking at significant changes across the transport system.
Ms Genter, speaking at the road safety summit in Wellington to an audience including regional mayors, councillors and chief executives, said the government will no longer use the term "road toll", as that term "suggests that this carnage is inevitable, that it's simply a fact of life".
"A toll is a price that we accept we must pay ... from now on we will call road fatalities what they are – deaths," Ms Genter said.
Totara St is closed, with diversions in place, while Police Serious Crash Unit investigates.
She pointed at Sweden as a good example of the direction New Zealand should be headed - the Scandinavian country has halved its road toll within 20 years by lowering some speed limits, raising others, improving safety features and increasing education.
The strategy will likely pull funding away from big nationally-significant roads, which Ms Genter says contribute only a small percentage of the daily trips across the country, and put that funding into smaller community roads.
Ms Genter said alcohol interlock devices will become mandatory for serious drink-driving offenders from July this year.
Speed limits around schools will be reviewed, she said, and the government will work with local councils to review speed management to "make local roads safer".
The crash happened on Puhinui Rd in Wiri.
Camera technologies like speed cameras, red light cameras and point-to-point cameras could be increased "to track and manage speed and other dangerous driver behaviour".
Most motorists will be familiar with speed and red light cameras, but the introduction of point-to-point cameras would be new - they are used in some parts of Australia and measure a driver's average speed along a long stretch of road in order to catch people who slow down only for the cameras.
Ms Genter signalled that the quality of vehicles entering the New Zealand fleet could be improved, including "introducing some new minimum standards" in cars - namely new safety technologies.
The graduated licence system - which sees drivers progress from Learners to Restricted to Full Licence holder - will also be reviewed, Ms Genter said, to see whether "the changes made to the graduated driver licensing system in recent years have had the positive impacts we hoped for".
Pedestrians, cyclists, children and those using mobility devices will be factored in to the new approach, Ms Genter said, with the government actively looking at enhancing their safety around cars.
Development of the new strategy will take until the end of September of 2019 and will be implemented from 2020, she said.
SHARE ME