Opinion – Safety on the Roads and in the Water

The hardest thing in the world to change is human behaviour – particularly on the roads and on the water, but also in the air.  I think the instinctive reaction of a lot of people, who flirt with unsafe practices, is that “it may happen to other people but not to me”.  Another common reaction to suggestions that safety devices or practices should be made compulsory s is “here we go – the nanny state in action again!”

When it comes to roads the good news is that the rate of road deaths seems to be on a long term downward trend.  However, most of this I think can be put down to improvements in roads and in cars.  On major roads, the use of a median barrier is pretty much standard now and the roads themselves are steadily improving.  Modern car technology has also had a big impact – the inherent safety of modern cars is improving all the time, but unfortunately that takes a long time to take effect as we have an ageing vehicle fleet.  The average age of a car in New Zealand is 12 to 14 years.

These improvements still leave the human behaviour factor and that suggests that the road toll is unlikely to ever completely disappear.   Part of that is the impact of alcohol (which is a whole article on its own) but the other issues that are hard to fight are inattention, people using their mobile phones while driving and tiredness.  Despite the evidence some people still don’t use safety belts.   It would be nice to think that road deaths would eventually disappear but I doubt it – the human fact or will take care of that.

On the water the big issue is that of wearing life jackets.  The recent Kaipara harbour bar disaster has brought that back into sharp relief.  There is no doubt that life jackets save lives if people either deliberately or because of an accident end up in the water.   Regulations to require the wearing of life jackets have been a point of discussion for a long time, but boaties themselves have argued against making it compulsory – most feel perfectly able to make a decision on when life jackets should be worn.  For some or even most that might be true – but peoples make mistakes and accidents happen to even the most careful of boaties.   And of course you don’t need a licence to f drive a boat.   Regulating to make life jackets compulsory in most situations – there would I think be some sensible exclusions – would undoubtedly save lives.

So I am personally in favour of regulating for the compulsory wearing of life jackets in most situations.

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This is another of Bas Walker’s posts on GrownUps.  Please look out for his articles, containing his Beachside Ponderings.