Weighing up the traffic blitz

Press, 6 January 1987, Page 16

Weighing up the traffic blitz

The drink-driving blitz has failed to reduce the number of people killed on the roads during the holidays. Despite the publicity, the expensive television commercials, the widespread newspaper advertisements, and the addition of policemen to the Ministry of Transport officers working long hours at checkpoints, the number of people who died on the roads this holiday was about the same as it was last year and less than in some years before the blitzes.

The Ministry’s spokesman on the blitz, Assistant Chief Traffic Superintendent Henry Gore, has described the M.O.T.’s effort as a success. “Who knows what the result would have been without the random stopping effort? The road toll is such a random thing, there is no prediction you can make about it,” he said. Mr Gore claims success for the blitz because fewer 1 people have been admitted to hospital from road accidents (though he does not give statistics), and

fewer people are being caught drinking and driving.

As a method of permanently lowering the road toll, however, blitzes seem to be inefficient. If there had been no checkpoints and random stopping this year, the death toll would probably have been slightly more than for the previous holiday period, in line with the upward trend in New Zealand for many years now. As soon as the publicity dies away and the blitz ends, the accident rate and drunken driving will be back to their normal levels.

By far the worst accident risks on New Zealand roads are male drivers under the age of 24. They cause accidents, frequently while drunk, out of all proportion to their numbers. A sustained, well-directed campaign directed against them could be a far more effective way of permanently reducing the road toll than stopping all drivers who happen to pass a particular spot on the road, on a particular evening.