Auckland black spot in national road toll

Auckland has suffered a surge in road deaths at a time when the national toll is declining.

Land Transport New Zealand figures issued last week revealed a 12 per cent rise in people killed on Auckland roads in the 11 months to December 1 - against an 8 per cent decline nationally.

There were 84 road deaths in the Auckland region by last week, compared with 75 by the beginning of last December, although the increase was entirely in the Counties-Manukau district.

A two-car smash in the Dome Valley, north of Warkworth on Saturday, in which one person died, has since pushed the region's total to 85.

The national toll was running at 385 on Thursday, down from 421 last year, although nine people have been killed in crashes since then.

Auckland's dismal performance, inflated by several multiple-fatalities after a decline in last year's toll, is alarming police and the new Auckland Regional Transport Authority.

They need to reduce fatal and injury crashes by 20 per cent by 2010 to meet Auckland's share of Government safety targets, which aim to cut the national toll to 300 deaths.

Authority chief executive Alan Thompson calls the trend "quite worrying" and wants a renewed focus on educating drivers as well as engineering safety improvements.

Land Transport NZ, set up last week in a merger of Government safety and funding agencies, estimates it will cost $490 million in engineering improvements for Auckland to meet its targets.

Mr Thompson, whose organisation is also only days old and was created under Auckland Regional Council auspices to make recommendations on spending priorities as well as to run public transport, believes most improvements will have to be to existing arterial roads.

Superintendent Roger Carson, head of road policing in Auckland, said highway patrols had reduced median speeds but this year's toll was inflated by several multiple-death crashes.

These included triple fatalities when a four-wheel-drive vehicle rolled on Muriwai Beach in July and when an off-duty taxi hit a power pole in New Lynn in August.

Four pedestrians were killed by traffic on the region's motorways, up from two last year.

The regional trend was dominated by a dramatic jump in road deaths in Counties-Manukau, from 25 to 39 this year.

Deaths were down in the Auckland police district, from 24 to 16, and the same as last year in the combined northern and western district, at 26.

A total of 81 for the three districts was less than the regional figure of 84 because the larger figure included parts of Franklin District in the Waikato police district.

Counties-Manukau road police manager Inspector Sandy Newsome said his year got off to a terrible start when four teenagers died in a car smash in Te Irirangi Drive.

Two other deaths occurred on his district's western sector of the notoriously dangerous State Highway 2, south of the Bombay Hills.

Transit New Zealand announced last week it would seek $43 million from Land Transport NZ for a 7.2km realignment of the road, east from the Mangatawhiri River to the Maramarua Golf Course, to help curb a crash rate 40 per cent higher than average for highways of its type.

Mr Newsome was at a loss to fully explain the increase in his territory, saying only that: "Every accident has its own story."

Although alcohol, speed and a failure to wear seatbelts remained all too common, he said some accidents, such as when an elderly woman hit a bank and died and a young man was killed hitting a pole, defied explanation.

TOLL TREND

Road toll, past four years*

Auckland: up 38pc

Rest of NZ: down 13pc

*Change in road deaths between 2000 and 2004, to Nov 29 each year.

Source: Land Transport NZ