Safety on the roads is always a hot topic over the holidays, and sadly, we have not done well.

Twenty people died on our roads over the official New Year holiday road toll period, which started at 4pm on 22 December and finished on 3 January at 6am.

The holiday road toll is down from last year when 21 people died during that same period – but just one less death is hardly something to celebrate. Most fatalities were in Waikato, where seven people died. The majority of the victims (13) were male and six were female.

The provisional annual road toll for 2023 is 343 – down on 372 in 2022, but well up on 2020’s road toll of 318.

According to a piece by Mike Yardley in The Press, that sorry statistic shows the Ministry of Transport’s Road to Zero strategy, brought in by the previous government, has failed. It is “struggling to maintain any street cred. It’s in tatters,” Yardley writes.

“Four years since its inception in January 2020, the national road toll defiantly makes a mockery of the strategy’s projected dividends.

“The Road to Zero plan, which was purposely designed to deliver an incremental reduction in road deaths, has failed to fire. Its paramount goal in its first 10 years is to reduce road deaths by 40% by 2030, based on 2018’s benchmark of 378 deaths.”

While there’s no disputing the intended reduction in deaths isn’t trending as planned – and we’ve had other factors like Covid-19 – I’m mindful indicators like this never trend strictly in a linear fashion and, often, there can be a considerable lag before changes come into effect, therefore gauging change over a relatively small period such as four years can be misleading.

The Ministry of Transport’s figures recording deaths by calendar year since 1990 indicate to me that progress was achieved between then (730) and 2013 (253). I suspect there are multiple reasons for that fall, including a good balance between the ‘three big Es’: enforcement, engineering (roads and cars) and education. However, since then, the road toll has been trending slightly upwards, or at best, plateaued over the past several years.

Therefore, I’m hesitant to attribute blame to the Road to Zero strategy, and I would tend to look further back for what significant changes have occurred in transport governance and regulation.

On 1 December 2004, the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transfund New Zealand were disestablished, and Land Transport New Zealand was created. Then, on 31 July 2008, Land Transport New Zealand was merged with Transit New Zealand to become the NZ Transport Agency or what we now know as Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency.

I don’t know whether those changes are connected, or even if they are, to what degree they might contribute to slowing down progress in reducing road trauma. But I do think the government needs to carefully consider significant factors of that order because that historical downward trend indicates to me that something was working pretty well – and unless the reason for the change is identified, I think reducing the annual road toll down to a couple of hundred deaths is magical thinking.

Of course, vehicles today are much safer with better passive and active safety systems, such as airbags and ABS brakes. Also, medical advances and the speed of getting emergency help within the first so-called ‘golden hour’ will have helped.

Better roads are safer roads, and unfortunately, many New Zealand highways are in a woeful condition or are hopelessly inadequate for today’s transport requirements after years or decades of underinvestment.

Already this year, mayors have called for urgent upgrades to state highways, including SH1 – the country’s main highway – as well as SH5 between Napier and Taupo and others throughout the country.

Public and media interest in the state of our roads is still high. Over the break, I travelled a few thousand kilometres over state highways, and apart from dodging several potholes, I have a cracked windscreen being replaced this week, caused by a stone flicked up by a car travelling the other way.

We are still concerned at the additional stress and strain truck drivers face when travelling on poor sections of road, particularly if they’re faced with approaching cars suddenly crossing the centreline to avoid potholes.

Transport Minister Simeon Brown has repeatedly declared his intention to fill New Zealand’s potholes and rethink pavement rehabilitation. This is encouraging but the government will need to turn thoughts into action and do that quickly.

National published an ambitious long- term plan for roading pre-election, and we will be doing all we can to keep the pressure on to ensure these promises become a reality.

This year needs to be one that focuses on problems and effective change.