EDITORIAL
WHAT COST A LIFE?
T
here’s something inherently false about a person who needs self-adulation, someone constantly looking for affirmation, to prove their worth. You get the feeling that, beneath the shiny surface, all is not as it’s made out to be. You know the type. Conversely, some people go about their business without fuss or fanfare, just quietly, efficiently and effectively working away, getting the job done. You know the type, too. When it comes to government agencies, regulatory bodies and the like, there’s really no place for the former. Just get on with the job and spend taxpayers’ money to our benefit. Do it properly, and there should be no need to keep us looking at the surface to convince us otherwise. Which is why I’ll add my voice to all those who have already done so and denounce Waka Kotahi’s current $4.74 million Road to Zero advertising campaign as utter garbage. Speaking of voices… In the four weeks since the June issue of New Zealand Trucking magazine went
to print, approximately 12 individual accidents involving trucks were reported around the country. The most serious of them was also one of the most recent, the tragic collision involving a family of nine on SH1 outside Picton. Another was that in which a 19-year-old Tauranga Boys’ College student was killed on SH2. Several voices have come out over the past weeks, especially in the wake of the Picton accident. Invariably, despite the facts and the circumstances, it’s the truck that lands up being demonised. Regardless of who was at fault, we need to get trucks off the road, they cry. And it’s amazing how many of them are missing the point. It’s not unsafe to drive on New Zealand’s roads because of trucks – it’s as unsafe for trucks as it is for anyone else. It’s unsafe to drive on New Zealand’s roads, because New Zealand’s roads are unsafe. Unfortunately, the risk of something going wrong each time a truck driver hits the open road is reduced to just another ‘hazard’ of the job – expected to be managed and
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mitigated by health and safety and filling in a log book. The problem, it bears repeating, is that a truck driver’s workplace is not confined by the walls of their depot or the cab of their truck. It’s every road between Cape Reinga and Bluff. In that regard, should the state and roading authority not assume some responsibility for every accident that occurs? Operators do what is required to keep their gear in mechanically fit condition and stay ahead of that date on the COF sticker. Drivers do what’s required to ensure their load is correctly secured and they’re in a lucid enough state to complete a journey hundreds of kilometres long – likewise, the average motorist. For the most part, at least, the requirement for a WOF should mean the vehicles on the nation’s roads are mechanically sound. And, to paraphrase one commentator, reasonable people don’t hit the road to put themselves and others in harm’s way. Granted, the key word there is ‘reasonable’ – i.e. sober, rested, calm, focused. The sad reality is that there’s no way to guarantee that – and when things go wrong on narrow, winding,
poor-quality roads, they tend to go wrong quickly. ‘New Zealand Roads are not like other roads.’ Whoever came up with that line is right; they’re not. Kiwi roads are from a bygone age when their design was constrained by topography. When the number, type and size of vehicles that used them were vastly different to today. When life was slower, and people were less distracted. And except for a handful of some admittedly good motorways and bypass projects, little has been done to change that. The fact is, Waka Kotahi needs to stop wasting time and millions on patch-job repairs, innovation funds, ideological roads to nowhere, and shiny advertising campaigns that make a mockery of the shocking reality and actually get on with the job of creating a national roading infrastructure suitable for the demands of today’s freight and traffic.
Gavin Myers Editor
