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Calls are growing for tougher driving tests after eight deaths at the weekend dealt a further blow to the Government's target of slashing the annual road toll to 300 or less.
The weekend's carnage has boosted the toll since January 1 to 63 deaths - which is 14 more than for the same time last year - and a growing threat to achieving the road safety target by 2010.
Twenty eight people have died on the roads in February alone, up from 10 at this time of the month last year.
Although the 2006 toll of 391 deaths was the lowest since 1960, safe driving went into reverse gear last year, in which 427 people were killed on New Zealand roads.
The latest setback drew an exasperated reaction yesterday from New Zealand Driver magazine editor Allan Dick, who said this country was filled with "lousy drivers" who had not been taught the rules of the road properly.
"We simply don't educate drivers," he told Radio New Zealand.
"The requirement to get your licence is minimal - you answer a few questions, the driving test is quite basic - and then you unleash people on the road."
Mr Dick called for new approach to training young drivers, rather than simply persisting with a "punitive" response to road crashes.
Automobile Association motoring affairs manager Mike Noon agreed that New Zealand was strong on enforcement and "light on education" while making good progress on building safer roads.
He said an existing pass rate of about 75 per cent in driver-licence tests was too high and the AA wanted these made "a bit tougher".
But he said he believed the main problem was attitudinal.
"A lot of New Zealanders are very aggressive drivers, quick quick to stamp on the accelerator and follow too close, so that when something unexpected happens we haven't got enough space," he told the Herald.
"We drive to the limit all the time and have a competitive approach to driving when we need to have a more relaxed, more forgiving, style."
Mr Noon said the AA welcomed the Government's decision just before Christmas to double to 12 months the minimum time for which people younger than 25 must stay on learner driver licences.
It was also pleased those on learner licences would be given an opportunity to take defensive driving courses at an early stage, to qualify for a six-month deduction of time needed to gain a full licence.
Novice drivers must now wait to graduate to restricted licences before being able to take such courses, to reduce the 18-month period on that second-tier before becoming fully qualified.
But Mr Noon said his organisation had hoped for a certain level of "attitudinal" and hazard identification, such as taught in defensive driving courses, to become a compulsory parts of licence tests.
AA driver trainer manager Karen Dickson said fewer than 25 per cent of new drivers received professional training, which she saw as an important foundation for further practice under parental supervision.
She said people often taught their children bad driving habits passed down from their own parents, but had an important supervisory and support role once youngsters learnt good skills from professional instructors.
Ms Dickson did not think New Zealanders were particularly bad drivers, compared with those in other countries she had visited, but too many had an over-inflated belief in their abilities.
"Everyone thinks they are a good driver, and that a bad driver is another person."
She also believed running red lights was a dangerous national past-time, and not one on which Aucklander drivers were the stand-alone villains.
MAYBE IT'S MELLOW MONDAY, AS RANDOM PATROL FINDS DRIVERS WELL-BEHAVED
Auckland motorists seemed uncommonly well-behaved during a random patrol by the Herald and the Automobile Association yesterday, apart from routine indiscretions such as failing to indicate, and several instances of red-light running.
Perhaps it was the impact of eight road deaths over the weekend, or the effect of a late-summer's Monday afternoon, but our fellow Aucklanders appeared in a mellow mood with no signs of road-rage on our radar.
That's not to say all was well on some busier stretches, as AA driver education national manager Karen Dickson drove and talked us through her survival rules on a half-hour tour trip from Mt Roskill to Queen St via the Southern Motorway.
On our way to collect our expert guide, the most dangerous behaviour we encountered was of a courier cyclist heading towards us on our side of Queen St and a trailer dragging garden clippings along the road behind it.
A pedestrian took his chances by slowing down in front of our vehicle as he shuffled across Queen St, and two schoolboys looked particularly vulnerable as they tried to weave through traffic inching towards the Carr St roundabout in Mt Roskill.
There are no pedestrian crossings at the roundabout, although it is close to several schools, and a Mercedes Benz parked on an approaching footpath did not improve the safety equation for other children trying to pass without straying onto the road.
Ms Dickson was careful to make eye contact with other drivers after taking the wheel of our car, and inching her way from Carr Rd into the flow.
Back we went to the roundabout, where she said many motorists had little idea how to use their indicators properly, although the driver in front performed a textbook circuit. That included obeying the new rule of indicating to the left before leaving a roundabout.
The traffic is slow but steady, as three cars turn in front of us in succession from Hillsborough Rd to Mt Albert Rd without indicating.
But nobody is tailgating or cutting us off, so we enjoy a relaxing cruise through a road-rage free zone to Greenlane, despite the slow progress. The Southern Motorway is equally uneventful.
It is not until we get back to central Auckland that we see the first red-light runner of the afternoon, a car veering across two lanes from Mayoral Drive to turn right up Queen St. Within minutes we have witnessed two more red-light offenders, an Audi car following another which had raced through an amber light, and a Stagecoach bus turning left up the hill from Victoria St to Albert St.
Ms Dickson acknowledges it is one of the better days on Auckland roads.
