Drink blamed for sharp increase in road toll

Press, 4 January 1978, Page 1

Drink blamed for sharp increase in road toll

PA Wellington The adoption of a more basic attitude to the link between drinking and driving could reduce New Zealand’s serious road toll, according to Mr A. A. Roxburgh. Chief Traffic Superintendent of the Ministry of Transport. Mr Roxburgh was commenting on last year’s 692 road deaths —an increase of 85 on the 1976 toll. Those in the age-group between 15 and 25 figured predominantly in 1977’s road deaths, as was usually the case in other years, he said. After this group came the elderly and middleaged, in about the same proportions.

Apart from calling for a change in the general attitude of motorists to driving and accidents, Mr Roxburgh emphasised the importance of defining more clearly and simply the incompatibility between drinking and driving. "Once we said no drinking and driving; now society says a few drinks are okay. I think our attitude to drinking is quite wrong. You should not drink and drive—people can understand this; it is simple,” he said. “But when you say you can have three glasses of sherry, you start to get into a complex situation.” Mr Roxburgh said it was difficult to calculate the effects of only one or two drinks on the individual constitution in terms of tiredness or drowsiness at the end of a long day. The general attitude to accidents must also change: “We just take carnage on the roads as an accepted thing . . . until we get out of this attitude the trouble will remain,” he said. "All the legislation in the world will not do anything unless people are prepared to do something.” Mr Roxburgh also spoke of a need for more black-and-white patrol cars, or even more unmarked police car patrols — it did not matter a great deal which.

A proportion of unmarked police patrols within the Ministry of Transport were working very successfully, Mr Roxburgh said, but he declined to give the number.

A Government cut in traffic-officer numbers during 1977 was one of the

main factors responsible for the high road toll, but the Government was allowing an extra 50 officers to be trained this year, he said, although the intake would probably not be on the roads for another nine months.

Lack of experience among younger drivers was another factor contributing to the higher road toll. The holiday road toll yesterday reached 28, 11 more than at the same time last year. The official holiday period ends at 8 a.m. today.

Three persons died and four others were injured in a three-vehicle collision at Te Roti, eight kilometres south of Eltham, in central Taranaki, at 10.15 p.m. yesterday. Two elderly women, believed to be from the Stratford area, and a middle-aged man from Hawera, were killed. A small car in which the two women were travelling was involved in a head-on collision with another car, and a third vehicle struck the two cars moments later.

The names of the three dead were not available early this morning. A Waimate man died and four other persons were injured in a head-on collision between two vehicles in the Cromwell Gorge yesterday morning. The man killed was

Brian Andrew Stirling, aged 28, of Wilkin Street, Waimate.

The main highway between Clyde and Cromwell was blocked for an hour and a quarter after the accident as emergency services worked to free the drivers of the two vehicles. More than 1000 vehicles were backed up on either side of the accident scene, about three miles on the Cromwell side of Clyde, at 10.10 a.m. When a goods train ploughed into a stalled car on a level crossing east of New Plymouth yesterday, a man died, and two women were injured. The man killed was

William Gordon Treanor, aged 54, retired, of Mangati Road, New Plymouth.

He was a passenger in the car which was hit by the train at 12.50 p.m. at a crossing near Bell Block.

A Christchurch man was killed when his car ran off the road at a sharp bend on the Shenandoah Road between Springs Junction and Murchison on December 31. He was Reginald Stephen Wells, aged 73, married, of 119 A Innes Road, Christchurch.

The accident occurred about 9 am. on a stretch of shingle road at Cattle Crate Bend at Frog Flat. The car failed to take a bend and plunged 19 metres into a creek. The driver of a car died after his vehicle was involved in a head-on collision with a truck on the Waimatenui-Kaikohe Road about 7.20 pun. on Monday. He was

David Douglas Read, aged 31, single, of Whangarei.

In Whangarei just before midnight on Monday, a youth died when a car ran off the road and hit a tree after being involved in a collision with another vehicle. He was

Michael Thomas Doar, aged 18, of Stokes Valley Road, Wellington.

The man who died when he was thrown from a car when it rolled over at Butlers Comer, a mile south of Whataroa, on Monday, was

Kenneth Walsh Nolan, aged 46, a fanner, of Okarito, South Westland.

The driver of the car, William Reginald Neame, aged 46, of Westport, suffered a minor graze on the elbow.