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Is safety technology having the desired impact? Oliver Jepson, National motor manager, NZI
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occur and therefore, how businesses could prevent them from happening in the first place.
However, even with these advances in technology improving safety, there were 318 people killed in crashes in 2021 on New Zealand roads, indicating that road deaths remain stubbornly and tragically high.
Is safety tech actually a distraction?
he first breakthrough in car safety came in 1934 when General Motors performed a crash test for the very first time on a 1929 Chevrolet. Since then, the transport industry has (thankfully) come a long way when it comes to safety, with most new vehicles now featuring some form of driver assistance technology (commonly known as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) – whether that’s adaptive cruise control, reversing cameras, adaptive braking, lane-departure warnings, or in-vehicle cameras.
Responding to the road toll A key component of NZI’s business is our dedicated Fleet Risk Management team. This team of experts work collaboratively with fleet owners around the country to create safer workplaces, improve driver performance, and identify trends that could help explain why accidents 24
June 2022
As part of this work, we set out to uncover what impact safety technology is having on New Zealand’s commercial drivers, from trucks and haulage through to courier and fleet cars. NZI’s newly released Improving Road Safety Through Technology report provides insights on awareness, understanding and usage of these new driving technologies – including a potential disconnect between the organisations implementing the technology and the drivers expected to use it. An independent research agency asked drivers to describe their major concerns when out on the road. Interestingly, a fifth of respondents cited safety warnings or alerts from in-vehicle safety technology as a potential distraction. Many manufacturers now have a higher level of standard technology in their vehicles, which is having a
