New Zealanders' dangerous driving could be improved

By ALASTAIR SLOANE motoring editor

Ashley Stitchbury reckons driving on State Highway One between Auckland and Hamilton is more exhausting than driving a 300 km/h racecar around the Pukekohe track. Shane Drake agrees.

"The standard of driving and the behaviour on the road are abysmal," said Stitchbury. "It's not just Auckland to Hamilton - I get scared on all New Zealand roads. Some of the things you see are unbelievable.

"I don't just have to watch what I'm doing - I have to watch out for every other driver. I'm knackered by the time I get to Hamilton. I just want to get out of the car and go for a walk.

"Okay, our roads aren't the best and it's easy to get frustrated with inconsiderate drivers. But why, for instance, do New Zealand drivers speed up in the left lane of a double passing lane?

"It happens all the time. I've been in a car with such a driver. I told him, 'What are you doing? You stayed in the left lane to let other cars pass. Now you are making it harder for them to do so.'

"That's a pig-headed attitude, dangerous and typical of New Zealand drivers."

Stitchbury and Drake are motorsport champions, globetrotting drivers and holders of New Zealand titles. They have driven everything from go-karts to 300 km/h racecars. They have made milli-second, race-winning decisions. They have made mistakes. ("Nothing concentrates the mind like an error of judgment at 280 km/h," says Drake.)

But they have mostly managed to confine their mistakes to the race track. "If I did things on the track I see drivers doing on the road, I'd be dead," says Drake.

Stitchbury was driving to the Manfeild track the other day when he rounded a corner to be confronted by four truck and trailer rigs nose to tail at speed. "They were going so fast they were swaying. I was so shook up and angry I rang the trucking company."

A similar incident forced Drake to write to the Land Transport Safety Authority. "I sent about a 2000-word letter. I didn't big-note, I just said I was involved in motorsport. I got a letter back saying thanks for my letter."

Both men want driver training centres established in New Zealand - with skid pans, varied road surfaces, emergency elements, a small, high-speed track - staffed by qualified people and mostly using experienced race drivers as instructors. There has been a push for such centres for some time.

"The reaction we get when we do drive days with members of the public is brilliant," says Stitchbury.

"They respect us. They listen. They fire questions at us. They want to learn to be better drivers. They want to know their skill level. We don't have a problem telling them. Sometimes they don't like it - but they take it in."

Adds Drake: "They want to know why they should be thinking and looking 12 seconds up the road and not at their car's bonnet or the car in front. They want to know braking techniques, how to keep the car balanced. They want to know how best to hold their hands on the steering wheel. Having been told that, we then tell them to drive with the eyes and not their hands."

Stitchbury and Drake are qualified driving instructors. "When I was racing in Europe," said Stitchbury, "I would teach at driving centres during the week and race on weekends. That's what many race drivers do overseas. Greg Murphy is doing it in Australia all the time."

The driving centres, they believe, could partly be funded by revenue from speeding fines (which mostly go into the government's consolidated fund) and an insurance or licensing levy.

"Most drivers wouldn't know what it's like to really lose control of a car, when momentum takes over and there's not much you can do," says Stitchbury.

"A skid pan is a great place to start. It's a controlled environment and almost all drivers overreact at first, unsettling the car even more."

They reason that improving driver skills would cut road deaths, reduce accidents, and save tens of millions of dollars in medical and insurance costs. It's not rocket science.

"I could cut the road toll overnight," said Drake. "I would make a television series using mainly figurehead race drivers, people who have a public profile. We would focus on the things New Zealand drivers do wrong and tell them how to do it right. Some people are incapable of taking anything on board. But some of the advice would immediately stick."

In 1999, 509 people died on New Zealand roads. Just over 200 of those deaths were alcohol related. International statistics conclude that about 90 per cent of road deaths are caused by driver error.

Says Stitchbury: "Why are we such a back-to-front country? We go to school to learn to read and write. We leave school with a certificate to say we learned certain skills. But when it comes to driving we get given a certificate to allow us to drive before we have the necessary skills to do so. It's crazy. It's madness."