Editorial: Let's win at roulette in 2013 too

It's how many tests Buck Shelford lost as All Blacks captain.

It's how many pigs you can legally keep in suburban Napier.

It's the alcohol limit for drivers under 20.

It's the number of native trees in Hastings' CBD.

It is, of course, "zero".

It is also, of course, the net number of motorists who perished during the 2012 Easter holiday period.

Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada.

I sat down to write this piece about 2pm Monday. It was always going to be conditional. There were 16 hours remaining before I could officially celebrate the holiday's dearth of death.

That same day I'd driven to Napier. When I hit the 100km/h zone I couldn't help but sense a type of macabre national countdown. Just one unlucky soul could ruin a perfect Easter scorecard.

Yesterday morning I woke to Radio New Zealand's 6am news. Zero it was. What a heartening headline.

For the media it's one of the rare scenarios where no news is big news. The public have become so used to emergency scenes marring the holiday spirit.

In fact in many ways the nation's come to accept that a certain percentage of Easter motorists simply don't make it home.

I've always felt this is a strange compromise we make for the freedom to journey.

As fate would have it, yesterday, the day the official holiday period ended, was also the anniversary of the Wahine ferry disaster. Fifty-three people, exercising their freedom to journey, drowned on April 10, 1968.

On Sunday, police spokesman Rob Morgan caught my attention by claiming Easter's zero body-count could in part be attributed to fewer people opting to travel.

Perhaps it's come to this. Many are now refusing to make this compromise. I do too on occasion. If the destination isn't worth the risk, I'm inclined to flag the idea.

It's a cynical view. At times crippling. But your outlook changes when you're transporting your own children.

The perennial holiday car wrecks, statistics and hard-hitting TV advertisements have perhaps tipped the scales - staying safe, means staying home.

I doubt that was the campaign's intended effect. And while there's no doubt staying off the road precludes one becoming a statistic, it hardly addresses road safety.

When we jump behind the wheel, we all inadvertently play roulette.

The key, perhaps, is to see this fantastic Easter result not as an aberration, but a benchmark.