Samantha Motion: In New Zealand’s road cone debate, let’s not lose sight of risks roadworkers face

A truck that shunted another into three road workers, killing them, is removed from the crash scene on State Highway 2, Matatā. Photo / George Novak

OPINION:

Who’d be a roadworker?

On a good day, you might get a few friendly waves, but you are still out in all weather and some are the butt of jokes about slack work.

On a bad day, you’re out in all weather at the coalface of public roadworks rage, and the only thing separating your vulnerable body and live traffic may be some orange cones - and people may begrudge you even those, if they judge there to be too many.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown thinks the number of road cones used in the city is “excessive and unnecessary”.

Calling on Auckland Transport to cut its $145 million spend on cones and traffic management last week, Brown said he “[does] not accept the mantra ‘safety at any cost’,” and that it was holding back improvements to temporary traffic management that was an annoying imposition on Aucklanders. He was backed by Vector.

Bay of Plenty regional councillor Jane Nees also expressed “a little bit of sympathy” for Brown’s position, referencing “what seems to be permanent road cones and safety measures which are shutting off whole lanes all over the city”.

“I just wonder if they need to be so permanent and so extensive, because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of people working around some of those road safety measures,” she said in a public transport meeting.

Concerns about a preponderance of road cones in New Zealand aren’t new, and from the relative comfort of cars, trucks and buses, we have surely all felt the frustration of sitting at roadworks when we’re running late or stuck in the heat.

But the situation must look different from the other end of the stop/go sign.

Speeding and verbal abuse by motorists is just the start. Te Puke roadworkers had things thrown at them, and the Taranaki Daily News reported last year that some roadworkers had resorted to wearing body cameras because of the abuse they were copping from motorists.

Reports firearms were pointed at those manning Hawke’s Bay’s cyclone-mangled highways brought back memories of the horror shooting of stop/go operator George Taiaroa near Kinleath in 2013.

In 2019, a horror crash in Matatā underlined the vulnerability roadworkers face. Tauranga man David Cox’s truck clipped a Higgins vehicle, shunting it into a crew cleaning culvert and killing Rotorua men David Eparaima, Haki Hiha and Soul Raroa. The reparations Higgins and Cox were ordered to pay for their failures could not come close to making up for the loss of the victims’ families.

Last month, a man directing traffic in Waikato was hit by a truck and killed, and a traffic controller in Coromandel was injured at a site.

We can all appreciate that safety versus disruption and costs is a complex balancing act.

But when complaining about cones, let’s not lose sight of the lives on the line.