Speed cut may help to slash road toll

Drivers will be asked to consider dropping the open-road speed limit to 90 km/h and lowering the blood-alcohol limit to help slash the road toll in the next decade.

Raising the driving age to 17, introducing hidden speed cameras and spending more money building better roads are also part of a major discussion paper, Road Safety Strategy 2010, to be released on Thursday.

Transport Minister Mark Gosche said yesterday that every topic in the paper would be open for debate.

"The Government is saying there are things in there we are utterly opposed to, things we have probably got sympathy for and things we want to have a good think about."

He said he was not convinced about the merits of lowering the open-road speed limit and the Government had already rejected hidden speed cameras but they would still be part of the discussion.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said it was difficult keeping people to 100 km/h and it would be harder to keep them to 90 km/h.

"We just need better driving," she said.

The paper will discuss dropping the blood-alcohol limit from 80mg to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood and from 30mg to zero for drivers under 20.

It will also propose raising the minimum driving age from 15 to 17.

The paper will be released by the National Road Safety Committee, made up of the Transport Ministry, Transit New Zealand, ACC and the Land Transport Safety Authority.

The committee will organise discussions round the country and call for submissions by the end of the year.

The aim is to cut the road toll to 280 over the next decade.

The best New Zealand has managed since records began in the 1960s was 501 road deaths, in 1998.

The Land Transport Safety Authority is separately working on a new rule for motorists using hand-held cellphones, which is expected to be available for public discussion next June.

Mr Gosche said he was not in favour of banning hand-held cellphones but he was waiting for more evidence before making a final decision.

The authority has found that more accidents are caused by drivers being distracted by car stereos (41 last year) and reaching for an item (43) than being distracted by phones (21).

In the United States, distracted drivers cause at least 4000 accidents a day.

A 1997 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found talking on a phone while driving quadrupled the risk of an accident and was almost as dangerous as being drunk behind the wheel.