New attitudes on road toll ‘essential’

Press, 10 March 1982, Page 6

New attitudes on road toll ‘essential’

PA Invercargill The total number of people killed and injured on New Zealand roads since World War II was five times the combined casualty lists of both world wars, said the Minister of Transport (Mr Gain) yesterday. : : “We lose our awareness of the size of the problem,” he told the Invercargill Rotary Club, i “Society has become mentally adjusted to accept'its inevitability, and this is what makes a change in social attitude the essential path in the search for answers. “There is a continuing need to tell the road safety message with imagination and variety so that the essentials of the message do not lose their place of awareness in the public mind,” Mr Gair said. Existing programmes had had some effect in reducing the road toll, and they would remain a top priority.

Alcohol was the main factor in about 50 per cent of fatal car crashes, Mr Gair said. An opinion poll, published last week, showed that 64 per cent of New Zealanders favoured random breath testing. It seemed the public’s level of concern on drinking and driving was increasing, he said. After initial success with drink-driving blitzs, the effects appeared to be wearing off, he said. Research had shown a fatal accident reduction of almost 50 per cent in the drinking-driving period (all nights except Sunday) during the five months after the introduction of new legislation and the second alcohol blitz in December, 1978. “Available evidence from subsequent campaigns suggests, however, that the effects of successive blitzes are wearing off,” Mr Gair said.