The deadliest January on New Zealand roads since 2018 has prompted a plea for tougher licensing requirements.
There were 36 road deaths last month, the Ministry of Transport said, a significant increase on 22 deaths in January 2023 and an average of more than a death a day. Road safety advocate Greg Murphy said the statistic was "tragic" and "unacceptable".
He said New Zealand was "focused completely in the wrong spaces" on the issue.
He told Breakfast this morning: "You think of all the people that have been affected by [the road toll].
"All the whānau, friends that have lost loved ones. It sends a shiver down your spine.
"I'm just not surprised by it because we're not improving. We're not making the changes we need to make, the strategies are completely wrong and I've been saying it like Groundhog Day for the last 10 years at least."
Murphy called for a shift in focus, prioritising driver education rather than other factors such as speed limits.
"We're not improving the core area, which is drivers," he said.
"We just keep doing it in other ways and we're operating under an ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff sort of scenario."
He acknowledged speed was a factor "in absolutely every single incident, crash, accident, absolutely".
But blanket lowering of speed limits wasn't the answer, Murphy said, calling for a more targeted approach to speed limit shifts.
He zeroed in on distraction and fatigue as two of the biggest factors in road crashes.
"Then there's, unfortunately, incompetence. We have got so many people behind the wheel of motor vehicles that shouldn't be.
"A lot of people that don't have licences to start with, tens of thousands of people driving on the wrong licence, and we're not preparing drivers accordingly. We are handing over licences... like you're getting your licence out of a Weet-Bix packet.
"It's just ridiculous, we're not preparing drivers anywhere near where we need to be," Murphy said.
"We're setting them up for failure right from the beginning, effectively, with the poor system we have in place to get a driver's licence."
The motorsport legend heavily criticised the Road to Zero initiative and the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi, claiming NZTA "doesn't know what they're doing".
"The focus on drivers is almost non-existent and unfortunately — like it or not — we need to go down that path."
National minister Chris Bishop and Labour MP Ginny Andersen appeared on Breakfast later and joined the debate.
Bishop said drugs and alcohol were the "real drivers" of the road toll.
"They're the biggest factors, that's what's driving a lot of this," he said. "Speed is actually a minor contributor to overall road tolls."
The Government also planned to invest in safe roads, Bishop added.
He acknowledged it was about "finding the right balance" and speed limits in some places – such as outside schools – could be lowered, but he rejected the previous government's "blanket approach".
Andersen said speed was a factor and echoed Murphy's comments on distraction and fatigue.
"We need to do more than what we're doing right now.
"We need to continue to do a better job at educating our drivers and that's got to start right from the get-go," she said.
"I think we need to do a better job in our schools, in our young people, at enabling them to be better drivers."
SHARE ME