Gilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The Government is keen on making it easier to get more drivers on our roads. If proposed changes announced this week go through. The second practical driving test required for a full license will be scrapped and the number of eyesight tests needed will be reduced, with new safety measures being
introduced as well. It comes as the government continues with its pledge to reverse Labour's blankets speed limit reductions, something National campaigned on. But will a more affordable driver's license system and higher speed limits in some areas make our roads any safer. Today on the Front Page, we're joined by AA Road Safety spokesperson Dylan Thompson to discuss the government's latest plans for our roads. So, Dylan, the proposal on changes to how you actually achieve your full license
is out for public consultation. It includes new safety measures like a clean driving record of restricted drivers, harving the demerit threshold and introducing a zero alcohol limit for learner and restricted drivers of any age. Now take me through these changes? Are they long overdue use?
From the AOS perspective, we think that all those changes that you just mentioned would be good things that we support. At the moment, we have a zero alcohol limit up till the age of twenty, and then beyond that point you just have the standard point zero five adult alcohol limit. And what this change would mean is that anybody on a learner or a restricted license, regardless of their age,
would have a zero alcohol limit. So it would only be once you had achieved a full driver license and were over the age of twenty that you could consume any alcohol legally and get behind the wheel. We think
that's a good change. When you have people who, regardless of their age, they have less experience on the roads, they're still learning, they're still developing their skills, all those kind of things, you want to not have anything that can make your judgment of reactions worse, which alcohol can do. There's no reason for somebody to have to need to consume any alcohol in driving, So having a zero alcohol limit until you get a full license makes a lot
of sense to us. The other changes really that are being proposed, you could just call them really making tougher consequences for people if they break the rules when they're on a learner or restrictive license, we think that there's a lot of good positive benefits to doing that. It's the highest risk group on the roads in terms of crash rates. People under twenty five and people who have only recently started to drive have the highest crash rates on the roads. And right now, far too many are
quite comfortable about breaking a whole bunch of rules. And so if we can have more of a deterrent or more incentives to get those people to stick to the rules because they don't want to risk losing their license or taking longer to progress to a full license, we think that could actually motivate people more than the prospect
of a fine. That actual risk to a license may make some of those people better behave and stick to the rules, and that means less people using cell phones while they're driving, potentially not wearing seat belts, driving drunk, speeding, all those kind of things.
The Transport Minister Chris Bishop says New Zealand is an outlier internationally in requiring a practical test for someone on a restricted license applying for their full license.
Yes, that is true. So New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world that has two on road driving tests. Most other similar countries like ours, have just one on road driving tests, which would be like the equivalent of when you get your restrictive license in New Zealand. Currently, most of those other countries that only have one test also have requirements for a certain number of hours of practice that learner drivers have to clock
up and complete before they can sit that test. So some countries have requirements for having to complete certain number of practice hours with a supervising driver who is somebody with a full driver's license, and other countries, mainly in Europe, they have requirements for learners have to complete a certain number of professional lessons or hours of professional training before they can sit that test. So from the AA's perspective, we think New Zealand could look at moving to one
single on road test. But what we think should be part of that if we're going to do it, is introducing some minimum number of hours that learners would have to complete of super high practice before you could sit that test. Do we know why people don't have their fool license?
We don't know exactly. I'm an anecdotally certainly people I talk to going from your restricted to your full sitting that second test. If you already know how to drive. It's really stressful. It's not expensive, by the way, it's one hundred bucks. You've got to take time off school or work or whatever you're doing. You've got to go bock it. You've got to find a time that suits everybody.
A lot of people just don't bother graduating from their restrictor to their full So there's a lot of people out there right now breaking the law, just driving on they're restricted. That's not good. You also want young people in particularly to graduate through the system properly, and so we're bringing New Zealand into line with other countries.
I got my driver's license in South Australia, and I remember that all those trips, and we had a log book.
That my dad had to sign.
Every time I'd drive to work or drive back or something. We'd log it in the book and then take that book and then go get the practic driving test.
Why is there such.
An adverse reaction to there being two practical tests though? Doesn't they give us the assurance that we need to have someone on our roads full time.
I guess the way the government's looking at it is sort of asking are we actually getting benefits and do we need that second test because it does come with additional cost for people of having to pay about one hundred dollars for doing that second test, and assuming that they pass it that first time, and especially in a bunch of more rural provincial parts of New Zealand things like that, it can take quite a bit of time and travel for somebody to go and do that second test.
They might have to take a day off work or the outside of school, they might have to get a family member or somebody to drive them quite a distance to get to the testing location. The government is really, i guess, asking the question of is that needed and is it really delivering benefits to road safety? And if not, then could we reduce some costs and make it's a bit cheaper and easier for people to get a license. And certainly we want people to be able to go
through that licensing process without undue barriers or difficulties. But I think the key thing from the AA's perspective is also wanting to make sure that we're actually having people learn and develop and do the practice and build up the skills and experience that we want before they start
driving solo. And that's why we think that having some requirements around minimum number of hours of practice would be a really good thing to bring in if we were going to look at not having that second test.
Why hasn't it happened yet?
Because I don't want to give away my age. But when I got my license and had to do those hours in South I was it was a while ago.
That's a hard question for me to answer. Really. I think New Zealand has developed a culture that doesn't actually take learning to drive and driving seriously enough. A lot of people see it as something that doesn't require that much time and effort. From the AA's perspective, we think we need to change as a country. This is a critical life skill and it's also something that literally puts people's lives at risk. And right now New Zealand has one of the worst road safety records in terms of
developed countries around the world. We have one of the highest rate of road deaths from crashes and the highest risk group is under twenty five year olds. They die at the highest rate. So we have not been doing a great job in terms of actually training and preparing people to be safe drivers. Twenty eleven was the last time that there was a significant review of driver licensing system.
That's the way government tends to work. For these things, especially significant things, they're not going to be reviewed and looked at all the time because it takes up a bunch of time and effort from the government officials and departments. You only get these opportunities come around occasionally, maybe once
a decade or so. And that's in particular why right now we think, from our perspective at the AA, if we're going to look at making some significant changes, we're hoping the government is open to looking at some other additional options as well as what's been proposed, and really looking at a chance to increase and step up the standards that we are preparing and training people to start
driving on our roads. We think if we do that, if we build better foundations right from the start, that is going to then flow on to a long term improvement in road safety in New Zealand.
Now all of this comes as the government is moving ahead with reversing Labour's blanket speed limit reductions. What does this reversal of a reduction mean.
It's really unfortunate that I think the whole issue around speed limits and speed changes has become very polarizing and very politicized, and I don't think that's actually a good thing in terms of just our approach to setting speed limits. It's a lot more complicated than a bunch of people have think it is, or some of the headlines have made it out to be. Some of the roads that had speed reductions in recent years are going to see their speed limits go back up to what they were
before by the end of June. There is a lot of variation in terms of some of the highways around the country that had reductions going back up automatically. Others are currently having consultation, so it's still not certain at this stage whether they will go back or whether they will keep the lower limit. Some of the urban roads around the country going back up to the limits they
had before. A number of those in Auckland of urban roads that went down to thirty kilometers an hour going back to fifty kilometer or in our limits, and different parts of the country and in different places, the picture looks a little bit different. So the best I can summarize it is that some of the speed limit changes that we saw in the last few years are going to go back to what they were before. Twenty twenty and some of them are going to stay in place,
and we're still working through the details. It should be May this year that we will have a complete and final picture on which ones are going to go back up and which ones won't.
Right, So, there are different categories of these roads, and I think councilors have until you're quite right may to advise the NZTA of those specified roads subject to those reversals and things.
Why shouldn't we be driving slower on our roads? Though there have to be more negatives than positives to upping speed limits, I would presume.
I think that it's actually a more complicated picture than that. One way of looking at it is you could say that if we had people traveling slower speed limits, then there's going to be less risk and less force in bold. So if something goes wrong, people were going to be less likely with that ending up in a crash and
less likely of harm from that crash. But we also have the balance of people's ability to actually move around and for goods to move and that's one of the reasons why we have different types of roads, urban roads, highways,
rural roads and things like that. And from our perspective here at the AA, we really felt that we needed to be looking at three things for speed limits to work most effectively, and that was having limits that match the environment that they're in, having limits that make sense to people, and having limits that are set using a strong evidence base, looking at the crash history on those roads,
the likely impacts, those kind of things. And in recent years there was a growing sense amongst a bunch of communities out there and things like that that they are a bit of a disconnect had developed, and speed limits were being put in place by authorities that didn't match the environment or the purpose of the roads in some cases,
or didn't make sense to people. We actually did some research for our research foundation a few years ago looking at a number of highways that had reduced from one hundred kilometers an hour to eighty kilometers an hour, and it was really interesting to see the varied impact on some of those stretches of highway. After the limit changed, you saw reductions and the speeds people were traveling, and
they were traveling quite close to the limit. On other stretches of highway you saw very little change and actually the speeds that people were traveling, and you ended up with the majority of the traffic just traveling above the speed limits. So we think the best result here is we need to try and find that sweet spot of having speed limits that are going to make sense to people and suit the environment, because that is where then you get good compliance and you have people traveling at
those limits. If you have situations where the limits just feel and seem too low to people, they can often just choose to ignore them, and then you're not actually getting their safety benefits, and you've got a situation where you just have the majority of people flouting the rules.
So you just have to take in human nature as well. There are always people who are going to be flouting the law and going higher than eighty on a highway.
There are going to be some, absolutely, but it's trying to find what works for the majority. So it's not thinking about the complete outlies those people who deliberately and knowingly just want to drive really fast and go way above the speed limit because they want to or they don't really care about the rules. I think it's more focused on the vast majority of generally compliant people and trying to work with what's going to make sense to them.
Example of some of the survey work we've done around our AA members, we've seen really strong levels of support for variable speed limits and low speed limits around schools at those times the start and the end of school days when there's a lot of kids around, and people say, absolutely, we think lower limits at those times would be a
good thing and we should do that. But then if you're talking about those lower limits being in place when it's nine o'clock at night and there's very few people or traffic around, then people have a different view and think doesn't really make sense to me at that point to still be doing thirty kilometers an hour when I'm
the only car on the road. So we think that the approach that the government is taking around variable speed limits around schools and having lower limits at those key times makes a lot of sense and is going to work well with a lot of people slowing down those high risk times. Twenty twenty four looks set to have the lowest toll in more than a decade. This road safety advocate has a theory on why it.
Is globally recognized that the road toll follows the economy. When you've got high unemployment, these guys don't have the money to go out and buy big Harley Davidson's and bang them into them posts. When the economy improves, everybody gets optimistic. People buy fast cars, they buy fast bikes, and the end result.
Is more fatalities.
Two hundred and eighty nine people lost their lives on New Zealand's roads last year, and while that's still obviously too many, it's the first time it's been under three hundred since twenty fourteen, and the lowest rate of road deaths per capita in a century, So are we doing something right when it comes to road safety to have such a milestone.
We were extremely happy to see that result. It was very pleasing to see us fall back below a three hundred level, and if you look on a per population basis, it was actually the lowest rate of road deaths New Zealanders had since the nineteen twenty so basically in one hundred years, and we hope that we're going to see that continue. We've seen individual years in the park. Twenty thirteen was one where we had two hundred and fifty
three deaths, the lowest ever achieved in recent times. So we've had individual years in the past and then things have jumped back up and they've just been a bit of an aberration, so we are wanting to take a little bit more time to see what happens in this year and if we can replicate that performance. We're really hoping that it is actually signifying that we've turned a bit of a corner and are seeing some improvements in
our road safety record. There are some positive things that have been going on in New Zealand over recent years. It's often doesn't seem that way because most of the stories that are out there about road safety are about horrific and tragic crashes. But we have seen a lot of upgrades and improvements, particularly to some of our highest
risk highways in New Zealand. Over the last sort of fifteen to twenty years, a lot of those what used to be our highest risk highways have been replaced by new modern stretches of road or they've had significant safety upgrades and they have delivered raally substantial crash reductions. We've also continue to see vehicle safety improvements just progressing and getting better over time, so vehicles are more protective and
also have more technology to help prevent crashes. We've seen a bunch of changes happen around trunk and drugs driving, and the police have really worked hard to ramp back up alcohol testing because impair driving by alcohol and drugs in New Zealand is a chronically bad problem and it can get close to being forty plus percent of road deaths in a year, so it's great to see the
police really cracking down on that. Again. We think that one of the big things that we haven't been doing enough on from the AA's perspective is actually around that driver behavior, driver training and trying to upscale people, and so if we can do more to actually have people have a bit more knowledge, more awareness, more skills, more experience as they're starting out, we really hope that we're only going to see our road safety records keep gets
better and that means less and less people being hurt, seriously heard or killed and creatures on our rights.
Thanks for joining us, Dylan.
Thank you.
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.