A yearly report released by the Ministry of Transport in November suggests it may be.

“Motor Vehicle Crashes in New Zealand 2006” is a 179-page statistical study of every reported injury traffic crash in New Zealand. It has as its basis the thousands of individual traffic crash reports completed by police who attend injury crashes throughout the country. These reports are examined and coded by Land Transport NZ and the information is entered into a national Crash Analysis System.

The Ministry of Transport table shows the crashes and casualties by population centre for the year ended 31 December 2006. It is clear from this that Tauranga scored favourably in all categories when compared with other cities. To view the table in its entirety, including areas with much higher rural populations such as Western Bay of Plenty, Whakatane and Rotorua, go to the Ministry’s website at http://www.transport.govt.nz/annual-statistics-2006/

Police are getting better at targeting their enforcement campaigns so that road users who choose to break the law and potentially endanger lives are caught and punished. Regular campaigns focus on intersection safety, drink driving, speed and boy racer activities.

Kids on Feet and Kids can Ride; Safe with Age; Young Driver and Mobility Scooter Workshops, intersection and road code seminars and promotional materials – these and many more programmes are used to teach safety on the roads. Helping to spread the word are: Police Education Officers; Tauranga’s, Road Safety, Cycle Safety and Travel Safe Coordinators; Walking School Bus Volunteeers; Sgt Jacko and the Travelling Road Safety Show with Dan the Puppet Man and even Ruben the Road Safety Bear!

The ‘Drive to the Conditions’ campaign helped drivers be more aware of their environment, while the ‘Kill your Speed Not a Child’ campaign emphasised driver speed past schools and school buses. Just two of many campaigns undertaken and both achieved good speed reductions generally as a result.

Most of the top 20 crash sites in the city have been treated recently – for example SH2/Domain Road and SH29/Maunganui Road - or schemes are currently being progressed to make them safer. On a smaller scale there are literally hundreds of physical road safety improvements made throughout the city each year including pedestrian crossings, island refuges, speed humps, thresholds and cycle lanes, all of which encourage better and safer use of our roads.

Data is constantly being analysed (like traffic and speed counts) so we can determine the types of measures required to further improve road safety in Tauranga. And road safety groups work cooperatively to achieve the best outcomes for the city – most notably through the Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty Joint Road Safety Committee.

-In 1951 the population of New Zealand was 1.97 million with 447,000 registered vehicles on our roads. The number of fatalities in 1951 stood at 292 (272 fatal crashes). This equated to 14.8 fatalities per 100,000 population or 6.5 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles.
- Fatal crashes reached an all-time high in 1973, when there were 1.44 million registered vehicles on the road. That year 843 people were killed. This equated to 27.9 fatalities per 100,000 population (3.02 million in 1973) or 5.3 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles.
- Thankfully things have improved since then. In 2006 our population stood at 4.14 million, with 3.12 million vehicles. In 2006 there were 391 fatalities (the lowest number of fatalities since 1960). This equates to 9.4 fatalities per 100,000 population (the lowest figure since records began) or 1.3 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles (also the lowest figure since records began).