Vision Zero: Towards a revolutionary approach to lowering the terrible toll on our roads

Friday, 14 December 2018

It's huge, and it's full: 335 passengers on board.

There are children entertaining themselves with colouring books, parents settling toddlers, young couples choosing movies, elderly couples holding hands.

You walk down one aisle, and back the other, catching people's eyes as you pass.

As you're about to step off the Airbus A330 aircraft, you take a second look.

* Auckland Transport chairman says zero road deaths achievable

* We can reduce the road toll by copying Sweden

* Vision Zero provides best path to safety**

New Zealand's road toll is continuing to climb, with 2018 already the second deadliest year since 2010.

It's a lot of people – friends, couples, families – but when you think about the mass of people you've just seen, it's still 20 short of the number of people killed on our roads this year.

You've heard it before, no doubt you'll hear it again. 2018 has been a shocking year for road fatalities, with 355 killed on our roads so far and 16 days to go.

With the deadly holiday period approaching, that puts us on track to match the 378 deaths last year, and may be our worst in nine years.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

The aftermath of a two-vehicle crash in Waverley, Taranaki, that killed seven people this year.

When the 'Safer Journeys' road safety strategy 2010-20 was launched, then transport minister Steven Joyce said it set out directions and actions to reduce deaths and injuries on our roads.

We did well for three years, which might more fairly be attributed to measures in the previous 2000-10 strategy, which had a goal of no more than 300 deaths.

In 2010, there were 375 deaths and 2289 serious injuries.

By 2013, the figures had dipped to 254 deaths and 1981 serious injuries. But by last year we were back at 378 deaths and 2832 serious injuries.

In 2013 there were 254 deaths and 1981 serious injuries on our roads. But by last year we were back up to 378 deaths and 2832 serious injuries.

Ironically, Safer Journeys noted that a new approach was needed and that if nothing changed we could expect to see 400 road deaths by 2020 – a figure that, going by recent years, is far from unrealistic.

You could label the current Safer Journeys a failure.

But unlike its predecessor, the 2010-20 document had no firm 'target' of total road deaths against which its progress could be measured.

Instead, it had the vision of 'a safe road system increasingly free of death and serious injury'.

This absence of measurable targets was picked up in an independent evaluation of the strategy, which said, 'it is difficult to conclude anything else than that the lack of a set of national targets for significant reductions in road fatalities and serious injuries is having an effect on the safety experienced by road users in Zealand'.

The Ministry of Transport itself now acknowledges this was a weakness, and has said that having measurable outcomes will be part of the new strategy, due late next year after the release of a discussion document in March and April followed by public consultation.

Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter agrees.

This year's policy statement on land transport and the 2018-21 national land transport programme certainly indicate that safety is to be a higher priority than it has previously.

The new strategy should spell out, clearly, how the death toll is to be reduced.

VISION ZERO AND 'GOLD STANDARD' FOR ROAD SAFETY

Sweden features in many discussions about road safety.

It's held up as the gold standard, partly because it has reduced the number of road deaths, but mostly because it created the revolutionary 'Vision Zero' approach in 1997.

Adopted by many other countries (including Australia), the United Nations and most American states, it was said to turn the traditional approach to road safety on its head.

Simply put, it puts people first and is founded on the principle that 'it can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured when moving within the road transport system'.

Vision Zero does not mean 'zero crashes'.

Instead, it is a concept that deaths or serious injuries should never be regarded as an acceptable product of mobility.

In developing its new strategy, the New Zealand Government is investigating adopting a Vision Zero approach.

Ministry of Transport manager of mobility and safety Brent Johnston says the strategy will probably include 'measurable interim metrics' against which progress can be measured.

'Whether they're hard targets, we haven't worked through that process yet. But we want to have some measurable things to hold ourselves to account to, so we're able to say if we're on track.

'If we just focus on deaths alone I think we miss the big picture in terms of serious injuries. The focal point … is reduce this incredible amount of trauma, of which deaths are a smaller percentage.'

'We will have clear and measurable outcomes, including interim measures, to hold decision makers to account for the progress against those interim measures.'

Lars Ekman, a safety expert at the Swedish Transport Administration, gives talks around the world on the design, implementation and evaluation of Vision Zero.

Ask Ekman if targets are important and the phone line to Kristianstad goes momentarily silent.

'It's utterly important,' he then says. 'You need to have a target and you need to follow it up. A target is extremely essential.

'If we have a long-term vision the only way to reach that is by having a target.

'If you compare it with an athlete who has the vision of being the Olympic swimming champion, then you need to have a target for their event and when they reach it they need to improve it and so on.

'You can't just say, 'I'm better'. You need to measure that towards the target.'

He says the 'normal reason for not reaching the target is that you haven't done what you planned'.

The vision of Vision Zero is just that – it's an aspiration, it might not be met.

Sweden's target of 220 deaths by 2020 is looking highly unlikely.

In fact the past few years haven't been good. There were 253 road deaths last year, and it's had had more than 260 already this year. It's a big improvement on the 359 deaths in 2009, but still cause for concern.

Brent Johnston, manager mobility and safety at the Ministry of Transport. 'If we just focus on deaths alone I think we miss the big picture in terms of serious injuries.'

'One of the reasons is out of our control,' Ekman says. 'It's to do with the temperature of the economy and the nice warm summer. People are out driving quite a lot, and we are struggling with the speed issue. People continue to drive at unsafe speeds.'

A key to Sweden's success in lowering the death rate was the implementation of what they call '2+1 roads'. On these each lane of traffic takes turns to use a middle lane for overtaking, with a median barrier – often wire rope – separating the lanes.

'They were central to Vision Zero because they have the same level of safety as a motorway but at only a fraction of the cost,' Ekman says.

'They don't have huge motorway junctions, rather simple intersections but they have median barriers. And they don't have a very high level of service, but they're safe.

'If I had to choose one thing that has made the biggest difference it would be the median barrier. It eliminates the head-on collisions, which are fatal.'

VISION ZERO CLOSER TO HOME

Australia adopted the Safe System in 2004.

Lars Ekman, traffic safety expert at the Swedish Transport Administration: 'If I had to choose one thing that has made the biggest difference it would be the median barrier'.

In 2003, there were 8.2 deaths per 100,000 people in Australia. Last year there were 4.98 (in New Zealand there were 7.9).

David Logan, a senior research fellow at Australia's Monash University accident research centre, says the decline reflects the level of investment in road safety measures at a state and federal level.

'Targets are very important,' he says. 'We talk about Vision Zero all the time but in order to get there you've got to be able to make a path which you can point down with a zero at the end of it.

'We don't always meet targets, but where we don't it's usually due to funding.'

Logan says wire rope median and side barriers started being erected 20 years ago, but their implementation has taken off only over the past 4 to 5 years.

In his state of Victoria the roading body, VicRoads, aims to have every divided rural highway fully protected by wire rope median and side barriers by 2020.

'They reduce fatal and serious crashes by 85-90 per cent overall, so they're extraordinarily effective.

'There has also been a lot of effort in speed enforcement, usually by mobile speed cameras in rural and urban areas.

Dr David Logan, senior research fellow at Australia's Monash University: 'We don't always meet [road safety] targets, but where we don't it's usually due to funding'.

'We're working towards matching speed and infrastructure under the Safe System.'

With wire barriers and other protection such as roundabouts at intersections in rural areas, higher speed limits can be allowed.

'On an undivided road, under the Safe System you shouldn't be travelling more than 70-80kmh, but at this stage that won't work politically.'

Victoria is similar to New Zealand in that it has the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), a statutory injury insurance scheme similar to our Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).

Both schemes have a direct benefit in reducing road trauma, but unlike ACC, TAC invests heavily in road-safety infrastructure.

It's two years into a $1 billion investment on infrastructure such as barriers, tactile edge lines, traffic calming, roundabouts, and speed management that aim to reduce deaths and serious injuries on Victorian roads by 30 per cent.

Our ACC typically hasn't invested in infrastructure.

Given that ACC payments to claimants with road injuries totalled $479 million in 2017-18, it would seem there is sound rationale for spending more on preventive measures.

A proposal by the corporation to increase the average motor vehicle levy from $113.94 to $127.68 to deal with the increasing cost of road accident injuries was canned by the Government this month.

Ironically, this proposal came just four years after the levy was reduced from an average of $333 as acknowledgement of the improved safety features built into modern vehicles, and because ACC had collected enough money to cover historical claims.

Professor Samuel Charlton says driving has become an activity that people perform at a 'preconscious level'.

An independent evaluation of the Safer Journeys strategy in 2015 found that ACC could be playing a far more significant role in road safety.

ACC's chief customer officer, Emma Powell, says the motor vehicle account surplus, which was $33m in 2018, has two specific functions.

'One: to cover the lifetime costs of the injuries on our books, and two, to help smooth levy changes over multiple years, ensuring businesses and households were not impacted by significant levy increases.'

ACC is 'continually looking' at road safety investments, she says.

SPEED A PERENNIAL FACTOR IN ROAD CRASHES

No conversation about road safety is complete if it doesn't tackle speed.

The 2010-20 road safety strategy introduced the Safe System, which is essentially 'Vision Zero' (in Sweden the two are synonymous).

Basically, it aims for a more forgiving road system that accounts for humans making mistakes, does not apportion blame, and spreads responsibility for keeping people safe.

Samuel Charlton, Associate professor at Waikato University's Transport Research Group, says implementing a Safe System is not easy.

'Everyone acknowledges the importance of the safe system approach … but in some places in a country of our size with the extensive roading network we have, we can't overnight implement a safe system on all our roads.

'It would bankrupt you and it would bankrupt me.'

Some solutions are unpalatable, he says. 'If I told you we're going to have a zero-alcohol limit, that would have an incredible reduction in harm, but people won't wear that. They just won't.

'I could tell you we're going to have a maximum speed limit of 60kmh everywhere. That just doesn't make sense, but it would be one of the ways to achieve a safe system.'

Charlton says we need to understand more about driver behaviour – 'you can't just look at the numbers'.

'We need to understand what is behind those numbers, what the drivers are doing, what the causes of those crashes are and why drivers are being motivated to do the things they are doing.'

New Zealand police operate 48 static and 44 mobile speed cameras.

Speed is perennially the No 1 issue, he says. 'The personal risk is relatively low. You're not going to have a crash very frequently.

'The most dangerous road is one where people's perceived safe speed, or the speed that feels right, doesn't match the official speed.'

Automobile Association road safety spokesman Dylan Thomsen is in no doubt that lowering the speed limit from 100kmh to 80kmh for open roads without a dividing barrier would save lives.

But it would fix only part of the problem, and surveys show we don't want to go slower for the sake of it.

'[People are] not averse to speed limits coming down, but they want an approach which looks at speed limits, upgrading the roads, and doing the [safety] work.'

And the Government agrees. It has ruled out a blanket speed-limit reduction, and as part of its Safe System approach, has tasked local road controlling authorities with identifying their top 10 per cent of riskiest roads which need to be looked at.

But while lowering limits might not be popular, it can be done. Earlier this year, France lowered its speed limit on secondary roads without a dividing barrier from 90kmh to 80kmh, in a highly unpopular move.

The 2015 evaluation of Safer Journeys noted that our speed limits were very high compared with other countries and 'they almost universally exceed what might be regarded as speed limits which are aligned to safe system analysis'.

The evaluation was also critical of the police's standard enforcement tolerance of 10kmh above the speed limit, which was 'well above what can be considered good practice'.

Police staff have also questioned the sense of this tolerance.

In a 2016 presentation to a transport safety seminar, police manager of research and evaluation Nils Van Lamoen said other jurisdictions had started operating with reduced or zero thresholds, and that reducing or removing the threshold 'reduces the de facto speed limit'.

The 10kmh threshold 'is not good practice, and is a relic from the past', Van Lamoen said.

Charlton agrees.

'The problem is the public view it as the de facto speed limit and how you get them to feel unaggrieved when they get a ticket at the speed limit is really difficult.'

Police national manager of road policing Superintendent Steve Greally would not comment on why there was a speed threshold, saying the detection threshold was routinely reduced in support of various national road safety operations.

POLICING SPEED – DO WE NEED MORE CAMERAS?

Something else the 2015 evaluation criticised was the 'very low' fines and demerit point penalties for speeding, relative to the risk it imposed.

It questioned why demerit points weren't applied to speed camera-detected offending, and the relatively low number of speed cameras compared with other countries.

Speed enforcement is a focus of the Government's new safety strategy.

The Ministry of Transport is undertaking an Offences and Penalties Review, that will look at ensuring all infringement fees are appropriate and proportionate to risk.

It is also looking into whether there should be more speed cameras, and whether organisations such as councils should be able to operate their own networks of cameras.

Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter says she would need to see compelling evidence that a zero-alcohol limit for adult drivers would lead to a reduction in road deaths, before introducing it.

New Zealand police operate 48 static and 44 mobile speed cameras, and the New Zealand Transport Agency has 18 in Auckland's Waterview Tunnel.

Sweden has 1615 and a further 175 planned each year. It has about 141,000km of public road; New Zealand has 94,000km.

There are no mobile, unmarked speed cameras in Sweden, a deliberate strategy designed to increase the likelihood of getting caught without undermining public trust.

Conversely, in Victoria, unmarked mobile speed cameras are considered a vital part of the success in reducing the death rate (from 303 in 2008, when the population was 5.4m, to 230 last year, when the population was 6.3m).

While our Ministry of Transport considers whether a hard target of reducing road deaths is necessary in the next road safety strategy, police have already come up with one.

They have a target of reducing road deaths by five per cent every year from 2017.

The 2015 evaluation was critical of what it said was a 'bipartisan road safety problem in Parliament', illustrated by legislation around driver licensing and drink-driving having only just caught up with what was considered normal in other countries 20 years before.

It recommended the establishment of a parliamentary road safety committee or a sub-committee of the transport and industrial relations committee.

Andy Foster, president of Trafinz – the body representing councils on road safety and traffic management – says it has been calling 'for years' for an independent, adequately resourced road safety champion.

'We need someone who can tell it like it is, who can tell the government when it's done something well, and when it's done something poorly. Without fear or favour.'

Genter says, 'we are currently looking at a variety of governance models for the road safety programme'.

'There will, unfortunately, be a temptation for some politicians to oppose evidence-base solutions to score political points.

'We know, for example, that changing the speed limit from 100kmh to 80kmh on a dangerous road can have a huge safety benefit and almost no impact on travel times.

'Yet it's not uncommon to see political opposition to such moves.

Vision Zero does not mean 'zero crashes'. Instead, it is a concept that zero deaths and serious injuries are an acceptable product of mobility.

'With the increasing number of people being killed and seriously injured on our roads, I expect it will become difficult for politicians to oppose sensible, evidence-based road safety measures.'

In April, Genter said that 'no loss of life is acceptable', and the Government was investigating setting a target of zero road deaths.

'I accept that a target of zero deaths would be audacious, but ambitious targets are needed to focus the resources of both central and local government to save lives on our roads.

'No other industry accepts hundreds of people dying each year as normal.

'No person I know thinks losing a loved one in a crash is an acceptable price to pay for living in a modern society.'

ALCOHOL AND OLD 'DUNGERS': TWO BIG SAFETY CHALLENGES

Driving an older vehicle doesn't just burn up the fuel, it also increases your chances of being hurt or killed in a crash.

'To my mind, no conversation on road safety in New Zealand is complete without a conversation on vehicle safety, particularly light vehicle safety,' says NZTA acting road safety director Lisa Rossiter.

New Zealand has one of the oldest fleets in the OECD – older than Australia, Japan, most of Europe, Canada, and the United States.

And it is no coincidence these older cars are involved in more fatal crashes than newer, safer ones, Rossiter says.

'It is just a really weak part of our system and there are, frankly, a disproportionate number of people dying in one and two-star [safety rated] cars compared to how many one and two-star cars there are on the road.'

In fact, Research by Melbourne's Monash University shows a staggering 80 per cent of young people who die in road crashes in New Zealand drive cars with a one or two-star safety rating.

'We give them the old 'dunger' because they might crash it,' Rossiter says. 'We wouldn't let them play hockey without a mouthguard or let them ride in our car without a seatbelt, yet we put them in something that just doesn't offer any kind of protection when they miss that complex intersection and go too soon.'

The Government is looking at introducing new minimum safety standards for imported vehicles – which make up most of New Zealand's fleet – but it says any plans to introduce blanket rules to phase out older cars are not practical.

Meanwhile, despite increased efforts to stamp out drunk and drugged driving, the problem is not going away.

The percentage of impaired drivers involved in fatal crashes has remained pretty consistent over the past 20 years or so, and is showing no signs of coming down.

Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter has ruled out imposing a zero-alcohol limit for adult drivers in the short term, saying she would need to see compelling evidence that it would lead to a reduction in road deaths.

There is already a zero-alcohol limit for under-20s, and the legal limit for adult drivers has been reduced several times since it was introduced in 1969.

One change which experts say could help is the introduction of mandatory interlock sentences for repeat or serious drink-driving offenders.

As it stands now, only a few per cent of drivers eligible for the sentence receive them from the courts, with defence lawyers often successfully arguing against the sentence for their clients.

A member's bill to introduce random roadside drug testing looks to be struggling, copping criticism at its first reading in Parliament in September.