No amount of policing can combat stupidity but broadening blitzes and better laws may help, writes Garth George.
Superintendent Paula Rose, the national road policing manager for the police, showed a startling lack of understanding of human nature when she said that the police were "devastated" at the road toll of eight deaths over the three-day Labour weekend.
And earlier the police showed a disturbing naivety when they
announced that they were lowering the tolerance for speeding by 5km/h and aiming for a "fatality-free weekend", even if they conceded that it was a "bold, bold aim".
Ms Rose said that although drivers seemed to behave better during the weekend, "we still have had some idiots out there, people driving at excessive speeds or drinking".
How right she is. You see at least one of those every time you take even the shortest trip, invariably when there's not a police cruiser in sight.
However, she seems unable to see the connection between these statements of hers, that the continued presence of drinkers and speedsters and dreamers behind the wheel makes it absolutely impossible for our roads ever to be fatality-free.
There will always be drivers who will drink and drive, drive too fast, give in to impatience, overtake dangerously, or be inattentive at the wheel.
They are a fact of life and no amount of road policing or gruesome press and television advertising will make one iota of difference to these menaces.
Add to that the young age at which children can acquire a driver's licence, the inadequacy of the training and testing they receive, the sorry and dangerous state of many of our highways and byways, and any thoughts of radically lowering the road toll is simply an impossible dream.
It doesn't help, of course, that a timid Government raised the legal age for having a licence by one year instead of three.
In the calendar year so far 305 people have died on our roads compared with 324 at the corresponding time last year. In the 12 months to last Tuesday, 365 people have died on the roads compared with 403 for the corresponding period in 2008-09.
Considering the millions of drivers, both Kiwi and overseas visitors, driving millions of cars, trucks, vans, utes, motorcycles, buses and mobile homes billions of kilometres throughout New Zealand every year, the road death figures are, in fact, a credit to the road policing capabilities of the police.
But instead of concentrating heavily on drink-driving and speeding, which are easy-peasy revenue gatherers, the police and the New Zealand Transport Agency which provides much of the road-safety funding should broaden their efforts by having blitzes on other causes of many accidents - things like driving without due care and attention (is that still an offence?), cellphone use, dangerous overtaking and so on and on.
Meanwhile, the Herald on Sunday is to be commended for kicking off the Two Drinks Max campaign which continues this week in this newspaper and its associated website nzherald.co.nz.
I haven't signed up for it because I haven't drunk alcohol for 35 years and, unlike the editor of the Herald on Sunday, I don't have a drink-driving conviction on my record either. I should have, heaven knows, since I spent 20 years almost continuously over the limit.
If this campaign encourages the Government to think again about lowering the legal limit from 0.08 to 0.05 or even less, in line with the overwhelming weight of scientific research and the advice of the Law Commission, the Ministry of Transport and top police officers, it will have achieved much. But don't hold your breath.
The Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, reckoned the Two Drinks Max was "a very good initiative" but declined to sign the pledge, admitting drink-driving wasn't an issue when he had at his disposal a ministerial limousine.
And columnist Deborah Coddington observed that when she was an MP "the booze lobby kept my fridge stocked with free booze", which she gave to press secretaries.
"If MPs took time out from gin slurping, they might correct some of this country's ills - by reducing car crashes, for a start," she wrote.
However, even if the Two Drinks Max campaign signs up a million or more New Zealanders, there will always be those who will continue to drink and drive.
My own experience leads me to believe that anyone who chalks up a second drink-driving conviction is, prima facie, suffering from an alcohol problem; and that anyone who is convicted more than twice is, prima facie, an alcoholic. And all the campaigns, blitzes and prosecutions from now until kingdom come are not going to keep them off the road.
So to Ms Rose and others who dream of fatality-free roads, and to those who seek to do away with drink-driving, let me quote the great German-born physicist Albert Einstein, who changed the face of science in his 76 years: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
