By JASON COLLIE transport reporter
Maori and Pacific Islanders are three times more likely to need hospital treatment after a road crash than Europeans.
Road safety experts put the finding in the Land Transport Safety Authority's travel survey down to a number of socio-economic factors.
These include a lower rate of drivers with full licences, older and less safe vehicles, a poorer rate of seatbelt wearing and a higher proportion of young motorists.
They hope the extra $2.8 million being put into road safety campaigns and advertising in the Government's Closing the Gaps strategy will bring the hospitalisation rate closer to that of Europeans.
The study said that 20.5 Maori and 17.6 Pacific Island drivers ended up in hospital in 1997-98 for each 100 million kilometres travelled, compared with 6.1 Europeans. Twenty-six Maori and 21.9 Pacific Island passengers were hospitalised, compared with 6.8 Europeans.
The authority's research and statistics manager, Bill Frith, said: "It shows us that the work we are doing in Closing the Gaps is a good thing to be doing and there are gaps to be closed."
The figures also showed that Pacific Island children were six times more likely to be injured while walking than Europeans and three times more likely than Maori.
Mr Frith believed that was because Pacific Islanders live largely in cities where many areas were not fenced, increasing the risk of children running into the road.
Kitch Cuthbert, the road safety co-ordinator for Waitakere City, said the hospitalisation rate came from the socio-economic background rather than race.
"The poorer you are the more likely you are to be a road victim," she said. "The poorer you are the more likely you are not to have a car that is fully road-worthy and you are more likely not to have a full licence."
Poorer people were also more likely to have larger families, "which means more bodies in the vehicles and not enough safety belts and child restraints."
"So we have a picture painted of a low socio-economic community that are victims on our roads. If you put that in a framework you have a recipe for disaster."
Transport and Pacific Island Affairs Minister Mark Gosche said he was not surprised by the figures, but "I do not find it acceptable and it's something we should have seen movement on many years ago."
"We know that if you do the work in the community we can get the success rate that Kitch has got in Waitakere with the Maori and Pacific Island communities."
Mr Frith said the study, released yesterday and based in part on a survey of 14,000 people over a year, also produced worrying statistics about drink-driving.
Every age group now spends less time drinking than it did during a similar study 10 years ago except for those over 55, while the study found that 27 of every 1000 male drivers and nine out of 1000 female motorists were impaired by alcohol after 10 pm.
Mr Frith said the survey also found that nearly twice as many children are now driven to school than 10 years ago, primarily because of safety concerns. Children aged up to 14 now spent less than 15 minutes on average on their bicycles per week.
Maori, Islanders lift crash figures
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