ROAD ACCIDENT COSTS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28629, 4 July 1958, Page 3

ROAD ACCIDENT COSTS

Estimated At £lQm (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON. July 3. The total annual cost of road accidents in New’ Zealand was estimated at £lO million—“plus or minus £2 million”—by Mr N. F. Watkins, head of the Transport Department’s statistics branch, in an address to the annual conference of the New Zealand Statistical Association today. He also forecast that the number of deaths on New Zealand roads this year would be more than 400, compared with 384 in 1957.- • Between 1946 and 1957 the number of road deaths had doubled, though statistics showed that the number killed for every 10,000 vehicles on the road had fallen during this period from 6.49 to 5.86.

“This might seem more comforting,” he said. “But we can blind ourselves with figures. They are useful for comparison, but we must base a true assessment on population, and since 1946 the number killed for every 100,000 of population has risen from 10.86 to 17.2.”

The prime cause of motor-cycle accidents was not the standard of driving and road conduct, but the vehicle itself. “The plain fact is that the typical motor cycle gives little protection to the rider,” said Mr Watkins. One in every five accidents to motorcyclists involved injury to the rider, but the comparable figure for motor car was one in 15.

However, New Zealand had been the first country in the world to face squarely the road toll among motor-cyclists, he said. There had been a dramatic reduction in the number of motor cyclists killed since 1956, the year when regulations making safety helmets compulsory were introduced. Motor scooters he considered “a step forward”—they provided better leg protection than motor cycles.

To June this year there had also been a considerable improvement in the number of pedestrians aged more than 60 killed on the roads.

“But road safety today is bedevilled by the curse of apathy,” he said. “The average man says and thinks ‘lt can’t happen to me.’ It can and does.”