Editorial: When Kiwis take the law into their own hands, something is seriously wrong

This summer there seems to have been an unusual number of accidents involving overseas visitors in rental vehicles. Photo / NZH

Opinion

New Zealanders are not vigilantes by nature. When they start taking the law into their own hands, something is seriously wrong. A spate of accidents involving tourist drivers this summer has led to several incidents in which South Island residents have stopped drivers and confiscated their keys. The first two, at Franz Josef on Monday of last week and near Lindis Pass last month, were relatively innocuous and the vigilantes feel they did the responsible thing, handing in the keys at the nearest police station.

But the police expressed concern at where this sort of citizens' arrest could lead and last Friday in Greymouth, their concerns were realised. A motorist signalled the visitor to pull over on the town's Main South Rd and punched him in the face as he seized the keys of the rental car. Police said the tourist had moved to the right and moved back left in a manoeuvre that did not amount to dangerous driving. The driver suffered bruising to his eye, his female passenger was shaken and police are seeking their assailant.

If every citizen could be trusted to act only when they had good cause and to do so with restraint, such actions could be applauded. But any unauthorised infringement of the rights of others is likely to give people of poor judgment the idea that they have a licence to do so. That is why observers of dangerous driving should confine their actions to a *555 call to the police.

While the authorities warn against vigilantism though, they must be concerned that it reflects a real problem on our roads. This summer there seems to have been an unusual number of accidents involving overseas visitors in rental vehicles. In January a judge in the Rotorua District Court confiscated the passport of a Chinese national until he paid $20,000 in reparation to a German couple seriously injured when he crossed the centre line on State Highway 5 near Wairakei. Judge James Weir had strong words for foreign drivers "who caused this sort of mayhem".

But all concerned should spare a thought for self-driving tourists in New Zealand. This is a country with a small population, beautiful scenery and, unlike most of the world, it drives on the left. Many of its most scenic roads, especially in the South Island, have little traffic. That probably makes them more hazardous.

They face a more difficult adjustment than New Zealanders driving in somewhere such as Europe where the volume of traffic on the roads provides a fairly constant indicator of the side to take when turning out of one road into another. On some stretches of New Zealand's secondary road, the driving tourist may be alone, which might explain some of the collisions on bends.

Whatever the reason, our rental car companies and road safety authorities need to find ways to make self-drive tourism safer. It is the best way for visitors to see New Zealand and it must be made safer for them if the country is to continue to reap the benefits of tourism. The solution may be as simple as more signs on roads, and on the dashboard of every rental vehicle, pointing left.

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