新西兰The most dangerous month for foreign drivers is coming

在新西兰

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/75680197/the-most-dangerous-month-for-foreign-drivers-is-coming

A non-fatal tourist crash: At least they were on the right side of the road.
Richard Kean

OPINION: We were half way up Avalanche Peak in Arthurs Pass last Thursday when the siren rang through the valley.

About 30 minutes later, when my legs were already shot on the goat track up to the peak, the helicopters, including the familiar red and yellow Westpac rescue helicopter, came thudding in.

It had to be serious and it was. A bus travelling from Franz Josef to Christchurch with Chinese tourists aboard (but with a NZ driver), and a car driven by another tourist, had collided in the Otira Gorge. Sixteen people were hospitalised, two in a critical condition and five in a serious condition.

The cause has yet to determined but you know it's tourist season in New Zealand when foreign visitors start crashing or dying on the roads.

Sometimes they are like French tourist Remi Morilleau, 27, who died when he crossed the centre line suddenly south of Whangarei on Christmas Day.

He had arrived in the country only hours before.

Sometimes they are drivers who kill NZ motorists. Two horrific cases spring to mind.

In November, 2012, a Chinese exchange student from Australia, Kejia Zheng, was on only her second day on holiday in NZ when she lost control of her Nissan Sunny and killed two motorcyclists — Grant Roberts, 43, from Timaru and Tauranga man Dennis Pederson, 54 — coming the other way in the Lindis Pass.

Five-year-old Ruby Marris, from Oamaru, died on February 21 last year in a head-on collision when a 4WD driven by Chinese tourist Jing Cao crossed the centre line and hit her family's station wagon near Moeraki.

Sometimes tourist drivers have probably killed other tourists.

For every high profile fatality, there are scores of near misses and incidents of reckless driving by tourists.

Some years ago I was driving home from the beach on a shingle road with the family on board when we came around a corner to see a car heading straight for us, at speed and on the wrong side of the road.

It hit us head on but luckily I knew the road was dangerous and was taking it easy. No injuries resulted although the damage bill was substantial. The other driver was an Australian tourist.

Allowing foreign drivers to drive on our roads with only an overseas licence, no questions asked, is of course asking for trouble. Some would say it borders on madness.

Let us imagine a not untypical overseas licensed driver. He or she doesn't know our road code; probably doesn't recognise our road signs or have sufficient English to read them; hasn't passed any test to check on competency; doesn't know the terrain or the road culture; may drive on a different side of the road in their own country and not be familiar with the car or the campervan they are driving.

In other words, a disaster in the making. It's astounding far more accidents involving tourists do not occur.

Yes, our own driving, myself included, is nothing to write home about.

Only 18 months ago I was driving home still jet lagged when I fell asleep at the wheel, crossed over to the other side of the road and broke a power pole in half. I could have killed myself and, more importantly, another person coming the other way.

However there can be no dispute overseas drivers certainly present an added danger.

But we need to be careful not to overstate the problem. Over the last decade tourist crashes have remained pretty stable despite the increasing numbers coming into the country and driving.

The figures show overseas drivers are much more likely to crash in tourist hot spots or rural areas.

Westland has the highest crash rate for foreign drivers followed by the Mackenzie District and Queenstown Lakes.

A Fairfax data project last year estimated one in 12 South Island crashes were the fault of tourists. They showed up in crash numbers during the tourist season at about nine times the rate they showed up on the road.

Apparently January is the busiest month for tourism in NZ but February is the most dangerous month for crashes.

Much is now being done especially in the rental car and campervan industry in an effort to educate overseas drivers about NZ driving conditions.

More draconian measures such as requiring tourist drivers to pass a driving test or at least be forced to do a trial drive with an instructor do not appear to be under serious consideration.

Such restrictions would be a major disincentive to tourism and would be opposed by the tourism industry.

Although checks and trial runs would not be cheap, they pale into comparison to the cost of tragedies on the roads. We should be looking at this option very carefully.

But there is something we can all do. From November to about March, we should all be treating every other motorist on the road as quite possibly completely incompetent or reckless and certainly potentially lethal. That means slowing down and remaining calm.

February is coming.

- Stuff