Government hotline for overzealous road-cone use an overzealous embarrassment – Editorial

Speed warnings still dominate our billboards – despite the reversal of lowered speed limits on many highway corridors. Photo / Mark Story

Editorial

• New Zealand’s new road-cone hotline was launched to address overzealous cone use.
• The hotline aims to tackle over-compliance in traffic management.
• Critics argue the focus should be on reducing road trauma and improving workplace safety.

No doubt talk-show host John Oliver has us in his crosshairs.

The entertaining frontman of America’s Last Week Tonight, known for his running gag on New Zealand’s quirks (famously, our Bird of the Year competition in 2023), has described us as “an endless well of joy”.

Our Government’s new road-cone “hotline” surely invites satire.

Launched earlier this month, the hotline tackles the “real issue” of overzealous road-cone use, with WorkSafe told to shed its “safety-at-all-costs mentality” and remedy over-compliance in temporary traffic management, among others.

Not many of us knew over-compliance was actually an issue — certainly not one so egregious it warranted a tip line.

Our anti-cone coalition is offering a solution to a problem few knew was a problem.

The more apparent predicament, you’d think, is the road toll – and our appalling workplace safety stats.

Cone-curbing thumbs its nose at both these plagues.

The current regime’s call to reinstate higher speeds on certain corridors of our highways seems to run counter to decades of speed-warning narrative from NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) and police.

The reversal sings from a different song sheet to the years of “Speed Kills ... The Faster You Go, The Bigger The Mess” campaigns and billboards.

In 2022, NZTA came in hot and heavy with assurances that lowered speeds were crucial; reduced speed and reduced harm were correlated.

One can infer either that the current Government disagrees with the 2022 stance of its expert agency – or is disinterested in its findings.

NZTA has been quiet about the about-face.

Consequently, it now has a credibility gap gifted courtesy of its new pro-accelerator ministers.

In May last year, former road-policing assistant commissioner Dave Cliff penned an opinion piece lamenting the “failure” to recognise the link between mean travel speeds and road-trauma rates. He quoted a 2021 Ministry of Transport report showing crashes had a social cost of over $9.7 billion.

“Governments must take steps to reduce the trauma by applying the ‘evidence’ and not insupportable political whim,” he wrote.

Recently, Dr Timothy Welch, a senior lecturer in the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture and Planning, Faculty of Engineering and Design, claimed that asking frustrated motorists to judge whether a worksite has too many cones is like asking passengers to report on a pilot’s landing procedure.

“It might feel satisfying, but it’s almost certainly a waste of everyone’s time.”

A road-toll comparison in 2023 showed that if New Zealand had the same per-capita rate of road deaths as Australia in that year, there would have been fewer than 250 people killed on New Zealand roads instead of 343.

Workers in New Zealand are still twice as likely to die in a workplace accident than those in Australia.

Lucky country, indeed.

Time to focus on over-compliance? Yeah, nah.

Go on, Mr Oliver, serve our deserved lampoon. After all, most hotlines are for those feeling unsafe – yet we Kiwis boast one for those who feel too safe.

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