This crash provoked a lot of angst around the country. It was certainly a tragedy and the families concerned are going to relive that horrid event every Christmas for years to come. But the response of the Police and others such as the AA are totally wrong headed.
The instant there is a road crash, the first question the Police answer is "was speed involved?" and the second is "was alcohol involved?". It seems the NZ Police have identified only two factors that cause crashes - speed and alcohol. They have also identified a number of "holiday blackspots" where crashes frequently occur at holiday weekends.
Well, I think they are looking in totally the wrong place and at the wrong time to prevent accidents such as reported above. The genesis of that crash on a straight stretch of road in Uretiti was at another place and at another time. It seems so obvious that people who are more accustomed to driving within city precincts and on roads with median barriers for 90% of the year are the ones who get in strife on the rare occasions they venture out into the country and onto dual carriage way roads. Quite frankly, when it comes to driving, they are at best, lacking in driving experience and quite likely, just plain incompetent.
In keeping with my "personal responsibility" philosophy, it behooves urban motorists to realise there are two roading systems in New Zealand - the unreal conditions they encounter while driving to work and the real conditions they find outside city limits. Learning to cope with the latter should not be tackled on a long weekend when everyone else is trying to escape the city. It is something that should be a part of a learner driver's curriculum, before they get their restricted license. And it is something that should be practised throughout one's driving career.
People who drive in rural settings are often experienced in a wider array of road conditions than their city dwelling counterparts. They are often more used to undulating road surfaces, diverse traffic types, being able to drive for extended distances at open road speed limits and encounter numerous hazards.
The blackspots the Police should be policing are the driveways in every urban environment in New Zealand. And the time for this policing is not at long weekends, it is every other week of the year. We should be ridding our roads of the patently incompetent - the driver hunched over the wheel with their face 150mm from the windscreen who is travelling at 80 km/hr when conditions are perfectly okay for 100 km/hr. And at the long weekends, Police should concentrate on the first 10 km of dual carriageway immediately outside our main cities. If a driver is demonstrating incompetence, being inconsiderate or indecisiveness that close to the city, it is going to get worse from there on. Pull them over, clamp their car, put the occupants on a bus back to the city and have their car delivered a day or so later. When other travellers see this happening, it will be a salient warning. Some may even voluntarily return home out of consideration for other motorists.
