Greetings from the South,
From next month we will be resuming the tradition of rotating the monthly
newsletter around the regional vice-presidents to present a wider range of
views. However, because I was a bit slow in getting this organised, this
month's newsletter is again from me.
Since December, the weather in New Zealand has been superb with warm sunny
days (temperatures in the mid-20s) and almost no rain. It is now getting to
the stage where a week or so of rain would be welcome to "green" up the
countryside and the city gardens. Because of the cooler spring the
pohutukawa trees (New Zealand's Christmas tree) were a little late flowering
but when they did they were spectacular. Flowering starts in November and
lasts through to mid to late January. Those of you who will be attending
HVTT14 in New Zealand next year should be able to see them in flower.
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1.
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Because Christmas falls in summer here, for most people, the Christmas-New
Year period is a holiday. Many people take their annual vacation around
this time and for this reason it is a time when there is a lot of traffic
and consequently a high-risk period for road safety. For road safety the
"holiday period" is defined as from 4pm on Christmas Eve until 6am on the
first working day in January. January 1st and 2nd are public holidays and
so this year the end of the "holiday period" was January 5th. During the
holiday period the police normally run some kind of safety campaign and the
number of fatalities occurring during the period are widely reported in the
press. For the last two years, the police focus has been on speed
enforcement and they have reduced the tolerance they allow before issuing
tickets from 10km/h to 4km/h.
There are some issues with this narrow focus on the holiday period. The
public and the press understanding of random processes is rather limited.
New Zealand is a small country and so the number of fatalities that occur in
a short period like this is relatively small and will vary quite a lot
through normal statistical variation. In 2012/13 there were 6 fatalities
which is the lowest figure recorded since records for the holiday period
began in 1958/59. The 2013/14 figure was 7 fatalities and the 2014/15
figure was 17 fatalities. This is a substantial increase and would appear
to indicate that something is going badly wrong with road safety. However,
if we look at the historical record over the last 25 years we see that quite
large fluctuations can occur from year to year even though the underlying
trend is downwards. Thus, although the high fatality level this year is a
poor outcome, it does not necessarily indicate any fundamental problem with
the road safety improvement program.
Why does this matter? A number of commentators have suggested that this
year's fatality rate indicates that the police enforcement program was not
effective. To some extent, the police contribute to this view, because, in
previous years when the outcome has been good, they have claimed that their
enforcement program was effective in delivering the outcome. In my view, an
effective road safety strategy requires buy-in from the motoring public and
so it is important that the public understands what works and what doesn't
based on evidence and sound statistical analysis. Simply looking at the
fatality rate over a short period in December and January does not provide
reliable evidence one way or the other.
Drive safely.
Regards,
John de Pont
President, IFRTT.
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