All right, is this a bit of a change? Yeah, a massive change. Basically, as you said,
Vision Zero's sole goal is eliminating fatalities and serious injuries on the road. So where
most road safety plans, like the safer journeys plan that we have at the moment tries to stop
crashes from happening in the first place, this one is going to basically say that humans
make errors, we know that we're, you know, we have flaws. So how do we stop serious injuries
and fatalities when those mistakes happen? And how did I go about doing that? Well, I
mean, the key to Vision Zero is taking a scientific evidence-based approach to road safety. So
a very good example is with the argument between roundabouts and traffic lights. For the past
decade or so we've tended towards traffic lights, because there's less crashes at traffic
lights, even if traffic might flow a little bit faster with roundabouts. But in a place
like Sweden, we have Vision Zero started in the '90s. They go with roundabouts, because
they found that although there's more crashes, the level of crashes is far less serious,
they're little dings from funny little angles, whereas if there's a crash at a traffic light,
you're much much more likely to have a serious injury, or fatality, in that sort of crash.
So that's the sort of change we might be able to see in this new plan. So does this mean
moving away from driver training and driver education, because, you know, a lot of people
in this whole debate that you've been reporting on the last few months, have really been,
you know, it's all about drivers, and they've got to be better trained in this sort of thing.
No, it's certainly not going away, it's supposed to be a whole approach. So driver training
is still important, the roads themselves is still important, they'll still be investment
and the roads and that sort of thing. What will be interesting to see is whether they
go away from some of the aspects that have worked in Sweden with Vision Zero. So we're
talking about the speed limits, which Julie Ann Genter has already come out and said,
we're not doing blanket speed limit reductions. But in Sweden, that's exactly what happened.
They dropped the speed limit to 80km/h where there's no median barrier. And then the motorways
are 110, 120 where they're engineered to be that fast. So that's already been ruled out.
So we might be getting a slightly watered down version of Vision Zero. But they're still
going to be working on those infrastructure gains and all those sorts of things. And ... Julie
Ann Genter was very quick to rule out that speed blanket speed reduction. I mean, it's,
well, it's a it's a political issue as well, isn't it? Yeah, I think that's the main issue
is, I feel like there's going to be a lot of people who would find that a very bad move.
particularly in regional areas. That's right. People like going 100km/h,
there's probably a little bit of denial that the roads are dangerous because of that issue,
that we think it's the drivers that are making the errors. And that's where Vision Zero comes
in and says, we know that drivers can be good, but we also know that they make mistakes.
So how do we make this road safer so that if you do crash, you're not plowing into a
tree At 100km/h, you're potentially going to survive that mistake. All right.
so when it comes to the roads, I mean, people have pointed out the road transport forum,
Paul Goldsmith, Sweden has, of course, a much higher quality when it comes to their roading
network... We don't really have the resource to spend billions on our roads do we?
No I don't think we will ever see a future where New Zealand's going to
have motorways and expressways across the entire state highway network. So that's not
something that's going to be achievable. But there are going to be improvements to our
roads with median barriers and side barriers and that sort of thing cheaper things
to do and achieve. I think it costs about $2 million per kilometer to put in a median
barrier because you have to widen the road and all that sort of thing. And that's proven
to prevent fatalities and serious injuries because you hit on crashes, I think it's 25%
of all crashes are head-ons. And you're going to reduce fatalities by up to 60% if you do that.
So those are the sort of changes we might see more of - things that are scientifically
proven like Vision Zero wants, to reduce these serious injuries and fatalities.