Letters: Foreign drivers need guiding signage on the roads

A Kaitaia man says changing the fog line to arrows could solve the problem of tourists driving in the wrong lane.

It was great to see the tribute in today's Age to the two much-loved ladies who lost their lives as a result of the recent accident on the Houhora Heads road. Good also to see the note at the end of the piece, where the mayor said he would ask council staff to address the issue of arrows on the roads.

At the end of the report of the accident in the previous Age, the ladies had become statistics in the road toll, which had gotten off to a "rough start" this year, according to the officer in charge of the Northland Road Policing unit. "Rough" goes nowhere near as a description of how our community is feeling at present.

One can only wonder at his health and safety plan to mitigate this obvious risk and hazard of foreign drivers defaulting to their natural instinct to drive on the wrong side of our roads.

The answer does seem to be in signage. Just as there are signs to indicate all manner of information on the roads, a serious effort needs to go towards the simple matter of which side of the road on which to drive.

This means signs/ arrows everywhere, not just a few here and there, as is the case now, starting with John Stewart's brilliant but simple and typically Kiwi practical idea, of the fog line becoming a series of arrows.

A Eureka moment if ever there was one.

The problem in all this of course is that like the farcical performance which was the issue of the speed signs at Pukenui, the NZ Transport Agency will be involved, and it will be another mire.

However, if a hole in the road, such as we had, can be sorted because it needs to be, so can the issue of signs/arrows. The challenge is to make it happen. Now, no mire.

And it needs to be sorted. In recent reports in the Herald, the NZ Tourism chief has trumpeted the fact that tourism is now the biggest income earner within New Zealand.

He also boldly states that there are to be significant increases in the number of tourists coming here. There was no indication of what he thought a realistic stocking rate might be, but it seems that the decider is quite likely the availability of beds for them all to sleep in.

All in all a situation which should have the Road Policing Unit worried about how that projected increase in foreign drivers might reflect in their statistics.

N WAGENER
Pukenui