Another tragic tally

A tragic tally:

As 2022 came to a close, the Ministry of Transport’s road toll count reached a provisional figure of 378 people killed on New Zealand roads during the year.

The 2021 and 2020 final road tolls both reached 318 road fatalities in each year – meaning this year’s toll surged 60 people higher.

That increase in deaths is equivalent to about two classrooms full of people more who were killed on our roads in the last twelve months, compared to the previous years. . . 

Waka Kotahi has spent a lot on bureacratic back-patting propaganda while the state of the roads has deteriorated.

But comparing last year with the two before doesn’t tell the full story when Auckland was fully locked down for months and the rest of the country was restricted for shorter periods in 2020 and 2021.

Bryan Sherritt, the director of Road to Zero, the ambitious Ministry of Transport project to reduce road deaths told RNZ in July that New Zealand’s road toll figures were “diabolical” and “still unacceptably high”.

However comparing annual tolls year-on year was not particularly helpful, because of “natural variation year-on-year”, Sherritt said: “What you should be comparing is more around like a five-year average, how we’re tracking against that … a longer term approach.”

The final road toll five years ago (2018) was finalised at 378 deaths in that year, meaning at this point the 2022 provisional tally eerily mirrored the same figure.

Sherritt said the speed and geographic spread with which the country improves roading infrastructure and enforcement and policing of road rules were key to reducing the number of people killed on the roads in the future. As is improving the policies surrounding roads. . . .

The focus should be on potholes not propaganda.

More needs to be spent on improving the roads, including more multi-lane stretches and median barriers; and more focus on deterring drunk and drugged drivers and those who travel well in excess of speed limits.

But there’s another tragic tally that rarely makes the headlines – the toll ovarian cancer takes.

It’s the deadliest of the five gynaecological cancers.

It kills more women in New Zealand than die on the roads and most years little or nothing is spent by the government on raising awareness of the symptoms, improving access to diagnosis, and research to improve treatments and outcomes.

Signs and symptoms include:

• Bloating
• Eating less and feeling fuller
• Abdominal/pelvic/back pain
• Needing to pee more or urgently
• Changes in bowel habits
• Indigestion
• Abnormal vaginal bleeding* or discharge
• Pain during intercourse
• Fatigue
• Unexplained weight change

So how do you know if it’s something you need to pay attention to?

We call it the TWO WEEK RULE. If it hasn’t gone away for good after two weeks – you should tell a doctor. Even one symptom is enough to mention. Especially if it’s a new change, or unusual for you, or getting worse.

Most of the time, it won’t be ovarian cancer but it’s really important to get checked, because the quicker ovarian cancer is found, the easier it is to treat.

*Abnormal bleeding should always be checked regardless of duration.

You can learn more here.

How slow will we go?

How slow does the government want us to go?

Confirmation that the Government is planning to slash speed limits across state highways in New Zealand is typical Labour, National’s Transport spokesperson Simeon Brown says.

“This Government simply cannot deliver. Labour’s plan is to slow New Zealanders down, rather than invest in our roads to make sure they’re safe to drive on.

“Today’s announcement is just the first step. Labour won’t stop until they have slashed the speed limits on almost every state highway in the country to a maximum of 80km/h.

“This is a short-sighted, quick-fix attempt to address the problem of road safety. It is overly simplistic and doesn’t deal with the underlying issues.

“Kiwis need both safe and efficient transport routes, especially for the freight companies and rural communities that help move our goods around New Zealand and get them to market.

“Reducing speed limits across the board is not the answer. This will simply increase travel times and make our rural communities more isolated.

It will also add costs to all businesses with a travel component, including freight and that will in turn feed inflation.

Slower speeds will also mean that commercial drivers will run out of hours sooner.

“Some state highways are going from 100 km/h to 60 km/h.

“It’s not good enough for the Government to reduce speed limits rather than getting the basics right by addressing the appalling condition of our state highways which have become peppered with potholes.

“National opposes blanket speed limit reductions. The Government’s priority should be to maintain our highways to a safe standard and to ensure that the road rules are being appropriately enforced.”

The consultation document is here.

It includes the suggestion of more speed cameras which have a lot more to do with revenue gathering than road safety.

The planned slow-downs aren’t as bad – yet – as the blanket nation-wide reductions rumoured to be proposed a couple of weeks ago, but there’s no guarantee that once they’ve slowed us down in some places they won’t extend the speed restrictions until the fastest permitted on all but motorways is 80 kph.

These maps show all the State Highways across NZ that Labour wants to reduce to 80kmph

Instead of focussing on improving the quality of our roads, Labour simply wants to just slow kiwis down on our roads.

National opposes blanket speed limit reductions. pic.twitter.com/FuXMxgqGNP

— Simeon Brown (@SimeonBrownMP) October 30, 2022

What the consultation document proposes will be confusing for motorists with multiple changes in speed limits over relatively short distances.

Reducing the road toll is a worthy aim but there are better ways to do it.

For example in Spain, main roads which aren’t motorways have rumble strips a few metres before an intersection when a minor road joins a major one. This warns drivers on both roads to take extra care without imposing blanket speed restrictions.

Waka Kotahi could also stop wasting money on advertisements that are nothing more than bureaucratic back-patting and spend more on improving roads.

More median barriers, more passing lanes and fewer pot holes would make roads safer without the need for permanent speed restrictions.

More policing that targets drunk and/or drugged drivers and others most likely to cause, or be involved in, accidents would also help.

Slower isn’t necessarily safer if it means drivers focus on speed limit signs which distract them or get bored or complacent while travelling more slowly.

That’s if most drivers do slow down and there’s no guarantee of that.

How slow will people go it they don’t understand, and agree with restrictions? There’s a very real risk that the social licence that keeps people obeying limits will be sabotaged, leading people to ignore not just the new requirements to drive more slowly but ignoring existing limits too. That will then make roads more dangerous.

Govt needs better customer service

How frustrating is this?

A group of New Zealand-trained nurses – some working with Covid-19 patients – are considering leaving the country because they can’t get a visa to live here.

That’s despite a nursing shortage so big it’s at crisis levels.

The government offered one-off residency visas to registered nurses from overseas but migrant nurses who were newly-trained in the New Zealand system did not qualify.

One nurse, who sometimes cared for Covid-19 patients, said it was frustrating.

“We are critical health workers – we are dealing with Covid patients every day,” she said.

She finished her Bachelor of Nursing last year and was seeing the nursing shortages first hand in her work.

“Last night was full crazy … running over my own feet. Every day we are very short of nurses. They do need nurses everywhere,” she said.

She was granted a three-year working visa, which meant she had no certainty about her future here, could not buy a home and did not have full access to state health care.

Tauranga nurse Parminder was in the same boat

She was orginally from India had worked in aged care in New Zealand for nine years, finishing her studies last year to become a fully registered nurse.

She loved working with elderly patients who had become like family – and she wanted to stay.

But it was difficult without certainty, she said. . . 

These are two of many critical workers in areas short of staff who can’t get residency.

A private business facing this problem would do everything in its power to retain its workers. Why isn’t the government?

If they were overseas these nurses could apply for residency. It is only bureaucratic and political intransigence and ignorance that is preventing a minor change in policy to allow qualified, experienced and much-needed workers doing essential work to apply when they’re already here.

Waka Kotahi is another government agency that needs to think like a private business:

Northland has become New Zealand’s first region-wide location for potentially cutting highway speed limits to 80km/h because of its roading management challenges.

That is according to Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency Road to Zero portfolio manager Tara MacMillan. . . 

She said the rural nature of its state highways, long skinny shape and needing to address a number of pending issues contributed to the decision to make it New Zealand’s first region-wide approach to reducing speed limits to 80km/h.

The outcome of this regional approach would potentially inform using the same option in other parts of the country, MacMillan said. . . 

This has already happened on parts of the Lewis Pass, the whole stretch of the road from Nelson to south of Blenheim and is planned for the Napier-Taupo road.

A private business that needed to address pending issues would address those issues, it wouldn’t institute major policy changes that would frustrate users of its products or services.

Nor would it even think about doing something that would add time and costs to the people it’s supposed to be serving.

Blanket 80kp/h limits will make travel slower and almost certainly increase the number of people getting ticketed for speeding. They could also add to the number of trucks on the roads because deliveries will be slower.

They won’t necessarily make the roads safer if, as is inevitable, it increases driver frustration which in turn leads to more risky driving.

The price of fuel is going up, increasing the amount of tax the government gets from that.

If the government directed more of that tax to improving roads instead of wasting it on boondoggles like the bike bridge to nowhere, travel would be safer without the need for the blanket imposition of lower speed limits.

The government and its agencies need to take lessons in customer service from businesses that understand, and care about, their customers.

Rural round-up

New research shows negative impact of mass forestry planting on productive sheep and beef land:

Large scale conversion of sheep and beef farms to forestry as a result of the Zero Carbon Bill will have a significant negative impact on rural New Zealand, according to research released by Beef + Lamb New Zealand. 

An analysis of Wairoa, where 8,486 hectares of sheep and beef farmland has, or is in the process of being, converted to forestry, shows forestry provides fewer jobs in rural communities than sheep and beef farms.

Rural consultancy BakerAg was commissioned by B+LNZ to compare the economic and employment effects of the conversion of sheep and beef farms into forestry.

The report, Social-economic impacts of large scale afforestation on rural communities in the Wairoa District, found that if all the sheep and beef farms in Wairoa were converted to forestry, then Wairoa would see a net loss of nearly 700 local jobs (the equivalent of one in five jobs in Wairoa) and net $23.5 million less spent in the local economy when compared to blanket forestry (excluding harvest year). . . 

Fonterra’s financial wellbeing and global auction prices are among the dairy sector’s challenges – Point of Order:

It’s shaping   up as a  tough  season  for  New Zealand’s  dairy farmers,  who  once  proudly  wore  the  label  of  the  “backbone of the  NZ  economy” , earning  by far the  largest  share of the country’s  export income.

So  what  are  the  problems  confronting  the industry?

Uncertainty in markets, for starters.   Prices  at the latest  Global Dairy  Trade  auction this  week slid  downward for  the fifth  time in  six  auctions.

The  Chinese  economy is under pressure   as  Trump steps up  his tariff  war.  Brexit  is a  threat which  could disrupt  NZ’s  dairy trade to  both the UK and EU markets. . .

#TheSolution 13 of 11 – Farming is part of the solution, please re-post and share to show your support #climatechange #ClimateAction #clubhectare #co2emission #organicmatter pic.twitter.com/8eBwj6CG1h

— TheFarmingForum (@TheFarmingForum) August 8, 2019

Big tick for farmers – Neal Wallace:

The red meat industry hopes to ramp up its Taste Pure Nature brand campaign on the back of the latest international climate change report.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is being welcomed by New Zealand farming leaders as an endorsement of our low impact systems and the importance of maintaining food production.

The IPCC says land on which we rely for food, water, energy, health and wellbeing is already under pressure and climate change will exacerbate that through desertification and land degradation potentially affecting food security.

The report’s advocacy of a balanced diet including animal protein sourced from resilient, sustainable, low greenhouse gas systems is an endorsement for NZ, Beef + Lamb chief insight officer Jeremy Baker says. . . 

FARMSTRONG: Maintaining fun is the secret:

Tangaroa Walker was the inaugural winner of the Ahuwhenua Young Maori Farmer Award in 2012 and has gone on to a successful career as a contract milker. Now he’s helping Farmstrong raise awareness of the importance of living well to farm well.

Tangaroa Walker remembers the moment he decided to go farming. 

“I was 11 years old and this guy drove up the driveway of our school in this flash car with his beautiful wife and hopped out.

“He was there to help set up a cross country course. I said ‘Hey man, what do you do?’ He said ‘I’m a farmer’. That was it. I ended up helping him out on his dairy farm when I was 13 and just cracked into it from there.”  . .

https://twitter.com/DougAvery12/status/1159727483358310400

The secret to a carbon friendly environment may surprise you – Nicolette Hahn Niman:

I won’t keep you in suspense. The key to carbon-friendly diets lies just beneath your feet: the soil. We are so used to looking skyward when thinking about climate, this is a bit counter-intuitive.

An unlikely combination of building soils and practicing responsible grazing could help mitigate climate change. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

Carbon in soils represents both a problem and an opportunity. On the one hand, soil’s degradation is truly alarming. According to the book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, at the current erosion rate the earth “would literally run out of topsoil in little more than a century.” And soil is the source of one-tenth of the earth’s human-caused carbon losses since 1850. . . 

Cow virtual fence trials encouraging: Pamu – Jono Edwards:

A company trialling virtual fencing for cows in Otago using electronic collars says tests show encouraging results.

Pamu Farms, which is the brand name for state-owned enterprise Landcorp Farming Ltd, earlier this year trialled “e-Shepherd” cattle collars at Waipori Station, which it owns.

It took 100 Angus steers equipped with solar-powered collars that show their location through GPS.

When the animals moved near digitally set forbidden zones they were dissuaded with a buzzing noise which gradually grew louder. . .

 

Left behind – Annie Gowen:

The feed chopper was the only machine Bob Krocak ever bought new, back when he was starting out as an ambitious young dairy farmer.

He used it to chop acres of alfalfa and corn to feed his herd of Holstein dairy cattle, which repaid him with some of the creamiest milk in Le Sueur County. The chopper and its fearsome blades lasted through four decades of cold winters, muddy springs and grueling harvests.

Now, on a chilly Saturday morning, Krocak, 64, was standing next to the chopper in the parking lot of Fahey Sales Auctioneers and Appraisers, trying to sell what he had always prized. The 128 Holsteins were already gone, sold last year when his family quit the dairy business after three unprofitable years. . .

PSA on road code

A public service advisory on the road code:

Is it that people don’t know, or do know and don’t observe the rule to turn into the lane closest to them?

It would help to encourage those turning left to turn into the left lane if there weren’t bulbous curbs which require cars to swing wide to get round them.

Slower safer but

The International Transport Forum recommends dropping speed limits:

Speed has a direct influence on crash occurrence and severity. With higher driving speeds, the number of crashes and the crash severity increase disproportionally. With lower speeds the number of crashes and the crash severity decrease. This relationship has been captured in various models, most notably Nilsson’s “Power Model”. This shows that a 1% increase in average speed results in approximately a 2% increase in injury crash frequency, a 3% increase in severe crash frequency, and a 4% increase in fatal crash frequency.

Thus, reducing speed by a few km/h can greatly reduce the risks of and severity of crashes. Lower driving speeds also benefit quality of life, especially in urban areas as the reduction of speed mitigates air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, fuel consumption and noise.

All the cases indicated a strong relationship between speed and the number of crashes, i.e , an increase in mean speed was accompanied by an increase in the number of crashes and/or injured road users. Conversely, a decrease in mean speed was associated with a decrease in the number of crashes and injured road users. In no cases was an increase in mean speed accompanied by a decrease in the number of crashes or casualties. The pattern of the relationship is consistent across cases, although the size of the effect differs substantially between them. These differences are explained partially by varying definitions for injury crashes between countries and the small overall numbers of fatal crashes for some of the countries studied. . . 

Based on that the ITF recommends dropping speed limits:

To reduce road trauma, governments need to take actions that will reduce the speed on roads as well as speed differences between vehicles sharing the same road. For individuals, the risks of a severe crash might seem small, but from a societal point of view there are substantial safety gains from reducing mean speeds on roads.

Set speed limits according to Safe System principles

The design of the road system and the speed limits set for it must consider the forces the human body can tolerate and survive. Working towards a Safe System, reasonable speed limits are 30 km/h in built up areas where there is a mix of vulnerable road users and motor vehicle traffic. In other areas with intersections and high risk of side collisions 50 km/h is appropriate. On rural roads without a median barrier to reduce the risk of head-on collisions, a speed limit of 70 km/h is appropriate. In urban areas, speeds above 50 km/h are not acceptable, with the exception of limited access arterial roads with no interaction with non-motorised traffic. Where motorised vehicles and vulnerable road users share the same space, such as in residential areas, 30 km/h is the recommended maximum.

There are very few New Zealand roads with median barriers  and Dog & Lemon Guide editor, Clive Matthew-Wilson said the reduction to 70 kph would be unworkable.

A proposal to lower the open road speed limit to 70kp/h on stretches without median barriers is “ridiculous and unworkable’, says the car review websitedogandlemon.com. . . 

“This is a knee-jerk reaction to a rising road toll and doesn’t really address the major issues. Think about it: only a tiny percentage of New Zealand roads have median barriers, even on state highways. Imposing a 70kp/h slow speed limit on long, straight roads would be met with open rebellion.”

It’s tempting now to exceed 100 kph on long, straight roads with few if any other vehicles. To lower the speed limit by 30 kph would be an invitation for drivers to rebel.

Matthew-Wilson cautiously supports the lowering of the speed limit on the most dangerous roads, but says 70kp/h, is probably too slow.

“New Zealand’s rural roads are often narrow, winding and poorly designed. On the most dangerous roads, where there are no safety measures in place, it makes sense to reduce the speed limit to 80kp/h.”

However, Matthew-Wilson says lowering the speed will have only a limited effect.

“About 80% of the road toll occurs below, not above, the speed limit. Of the 20% of accidents that occur above the speed limit, most are caused by either yobbos, impaired drivers or outlaw motorcyclists. All these groups tend to ignore speed limits anyway.”

Matthew-Wilson points out that rural drivers on secondary roads also tend to set their own speed limits.

“Lowering the speed limit may slow down tourists in a camper van, but will have little effect on the driving of most locals, who will simply ignore the new speed limits.”

“The government needs to get over the idea that average drivers and average speeds are the problem. The vast majority of accidents are caused by a tiny group of road users. Arbitrarily lowering the speed limit is unlikely to have any effect whatsoever on this high risk group.”

“If the speed limit is lowered on the worst roads, as an interim measure before median barriers are installed, I support it. If this proposal is simply an excuse to impose unrealistic speed limits across the country, I oppose it.

As things stand, I believe this proposal will cause as many problems as it solves, without having much effect on the road toll.”

There is no doubt that the higher the speed the bigger the mess will be if something goes wrong. Slower is safer but it isn’t always practical.

I live on a rural road. Most of it doesn’t even have a white line in the middle of it.

The road is several kilometres long and there are stretches with good visibility where it is safe to travel at 100 kph.

There are other stretches where a series of dips and bends make it safer to slow down and there are several kilometres of gravel where reducing speed is sensible.

The road doesn’t have much traffic on it. More often than not I don’t meet any other vehicles on it.

However, when I do it might be a tractor or stock truck which require those travelling in the opposite direction to keep well to the left and be prepared to slow down.

Locals know to take care and anyone who isn’t a local should do what we all should when we’re unfamiliar with a road – drive to the conditions which in this case means slowing down in several places.

Erecting more median barriers, targetting the yobbos, impaired drivers or outlaw motorcyclists Matthew-Wilson identifies as being the problem group and trusting other drivers to slow down when conditions require it would be far more effective than dropping the speed limit to an unworkable level.

 

Fuel tax and $pend fuel$ inflation

National MPs have been warning that the government’s proposed Auckland fuel tax wouldn’t apply just in Auckland – and they have been proved right.

The Government has today confirmed that it plans to gut regional roading projects to pay for trams in Auckland, and to charge regional motorists more to do so, National’s Transport spokesperson Jami-Lee Ross says.

“Today’s announcement will be met with anger and disappointment right around New Zealand, with the Government confirming it will cut around $5 billion out of the state highway construction programme over the next 10 years.

“That means roads which would have improved safety, created jobs, boosted regional economic growth and better connected our regional farmers and producers to our major centres will be axed.

“This is an extraordinary blow for regional New Zealand, from a Government which has claimed to stand behind it. Instead, the Government is saying their needs are secondary and ensuring tourists can get from the Auckland CBD to the airport is more pressing.

The government has put a $3 billion slush fund in the hands of Shane Jones for regional development. It would be far better to use some of that money for upgrading regional roads, but instead of tax increases not as well as them.

“Motorists right around New Zealand will also be shocked at the extraordinary new taxes the Government plans to impose on them.

“Aucklanders could actually find themselves paying as much as 25 cents a litre extra for their fuel within three years – once the proposed annual fuel excise and proposed regional fuel tax are taken into account.

“That means they will pay an extra $10 to $15 every time they fill up – and in less than three years the rest of New Zealand could be paying that fuel tax too, under legislation the Government introduced last week.

“That this Government will continue the previous Government’s commitment to road safety is to be applauded, but it is undermining that by axing the construction of New Zealand’s safest and busiest roads – the Roads of National Significance.”

The government has been crowing that the families package and increase in the minimum wage will help low income households. But there’s no point putting more money in one pocket if it’s taking more from the other.

An increase in fuel tax will increase the price of transport for people and goods.

The price of every trip will be higher for individuals, charities, businesses and entities like schools and health providers.

That will be inflationary and the people who will be hardest hit by the resulting price increases will be the poor the government is purporting to help.

The new tax also breaks an election promise:

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union says the Government’s proposal to increase fuel levies breaks Jacinda Ardern’s promise of ‘no new taxes’ and the widening of the Regional Transport Fund (paid for by petrol taxes) to include funding for cycleways and trams is a dumb idea.

Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director Jordan Williams says, “The plan to increase fuel taxes by 10-12 cents per litre means the Prime Minister is breaking her very clear pre-election promise of ‘no new taxes’.”

“Fuel tax is particularly harmful because of its regressive nature – the people it hurts most are poorer families living in fringe suburbs. This will ultimately mean less food on the table.”

“Aucklanders will be whacked twice over, with today’s fuel tax announcement applying on top of the proposed regional fuel tax.”

“And as if fuel tax hikes didn’t sting enough, the Government is going to be using the revenue to fund cycleways and trams, at the same time they’re slashing funding for highways. In other words, drivers are paying more to receive less.”

When I first became active in the National Party I sat through conference after conference where remits urged the then-government to ensure that fuel taxes went to roads  and not into the consolidated fund.

That eventually happened but now motorists will be taxed more and roading projects will receive less and Labour adds more fuel to the tax and spend fire.