Poor road lighting is making driving at night almost three times more dangerous in New Zealand than other countries, according to a report released today.
The report states the country's road lighting is insufficient and low quality contributing to the high road injury and fatality statistics.
'The risk of death and injury from driving at night in New Zealand is 5.8 times greater than during daytime in contrast to international experience, which shows it is only twice the risk,” the report states.
New Zealand highways currently have 75 per cent of the lighting in the UK, Europe and the US and residential streets have a quarter of the lighting levels in other developed countries.
The report, written by Godfrey Bridger from Bridger, Beavis and Associates Ltd and Bryan King from Lighting Management Consultants Ltd, is being presented to the Australasian Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference 2012 today.
Godfrey says the New Zealand road lighting standard suffers from technical deficiencies.
He says with better road lighting New Zealand could reduce its night time road fatalities and injuries by 35 per cent, saving 61 lives and 1538 other road users from injury each year.
It could also substantially reduce the estimated $1.2billion annual cost to the country of night time road deaths and injuries.
'We calculate that without even factoring in savings from greater energy efficiency and reduced maintenance requirements, a $700million New Zealand-wide upgrade to modern road lighting would return a benefit cost ratio of 10.3 based on reduced night time fatalities and injuries alone.
'And there's also the enormous saving in human suffering and misery which isn't captured in these statistics. A national road lighting upgrade is a no-brainer.”
7 comments
Bridges
Posted on 05-10-2012 19:00 | By Johnney
I was driving from Auckland to Tauranga at night recently and I couldn't help but notice as you approach most bridges the edges are not very clear. Though painted white most are very dirty. Also over the last 100 years we have had around 400 people killed in earthquakes and around 40,000 killed on the road over 80 years. Yes our roads are dangerous. Much more than our buildings. Just a thought to put things into perspective.
Cheaper solution.
Posted on 05-10-2012 20:01 | By dgk
And I thought not driving to the conditions was the biggest problem, and so much cheaper to fix.....
Lighting
Posted on 06-10-2012 09:53 | By Willem
Add to poor lighting the often far too bright headlights of oncoming traffic and you don't see anything for the next 50 meters. Being blinded by oncoming traffic is, I think, underrated as cause of accidents. A double row of badly positioned headlights, or facing too high, is extremely dangerous on country roads and in difficult road conditions.
More to it
Posted on 06-10-2012 09:55 | By pomfart
Whilst there may be an issue with lighting it is too simplistic to put it down to that. Surely there is an issue with kiwi drivers and their inability to stick to sensible speeds and within those little lines in the middle of the road. Road lighting is not very good in India too but you are safer on their roads.
A lighting consultant is one of the report authors
Posted on 06-10-2012 11:33 | By Gee Really
so what else would you expect??? Lighting in NZ is very good actually, almost overdone is some cases. Poor driving the more likely cause of accidents. But here we go again with an attack on the government coffers, in my opinion by those with a vested monetary interest in increasing lighting. Of course the electricity companies will have a field day.
ROADS
Posted on 10-10-2012 23:09 | By YOGI
Looks to me to be the quality of the roads that is the biggest issue.
Headlights
Posted on 11-10-2012 17:22 | By john2000
And there I was thinking cars had headlights to see at night....
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