Thank you for the invitation to address this conference. I believe this is one of the most important conferences I talk with, representing as it does a wide grouping of councillors and officers of so many New Zealand local authorities and people who have a focus on road safety.

Some of you may be disappointed that I have not arrived here today to talk about legislative proposals to ensure we meet our road safety goal of no more than 300 deaths and 4,500 hospitalisations by 2010.

However, most of you will understand why I am not doing this. This time last year many of you were seeking “leadership” from politicians and the definition of “leadership” was seen to be a preparedness to introduce tough legislation ahead of community buy-in, to leave the community in no doubt that the government was serious about road safety.

Let me assure you that the government is serious about road safety. So serious in fact, that we want to work together with you as partners on your conference theme of “Creating a Community Driven Safety Culture.”

Indeed, I believe that the only way we will achieve our road safety goals is through the creation of a community driven safety culture. As I said to you last year, there is nothing to prevent communities from establishing their own “Vision Zero” and, if all communities do this we will of course have such a vision nationally. It will be community driven rather than Government driven, but it would be very much Government supported.

In this presentation I want to focus on the critical importance of education in supporting the creation of a community driven safety culture. I would like to do that by comparing and contrasting what I will call a “compliance” culture with a safety culture.

A compliance culture is characterised by mindless obedience to rules for no other reason than that the rules exist. A culture where drivers worry more about being caught breaking the law than being killed or killing others.

A compliance culture is one where those managing and controlling the network simply follow a rule book, rarely questioning the validity of what they have been asked to do, and often failing to exercise good judgement or even common sense in interpreting and applying those rules.

In short it is a culture where every solution is a legislative solution, where every action and response is one which can be justified by reference to a rule or regulation. Everybody has their back protected by a rule.

A compliance culture is bred from a lack of confidence and understanding. Where people are not thoroughly familiar with an issue or a technology they tend to rely on the rule or instruction manual – they do not have the confidence or will to go beyond the manual, to develop pragmatic solutions and exercise common sense.

Finally, of course, while talking about a compliance culture and following rules, we increasingly have a sense that rules are also there to be broken. The graduated driver licensing system is a case in point – thousands of young people are simply ignoring the conditions placed on their licenses. This is extremely dangerous.

Obviously I have drawn an extreme view, while the situation may not be quite as bleak as I have just painted; I think we are some distance from a community driven safety culture at this time.

It is incumbent on me, in making a statement like this, to say what I believe a safety culture is…

It is a culture where safety is our first thought. A safety culture is one where we obey laws because we want to keep safe, not because we want to avoid penalties. Ultimately it is a culture where we will put keeping safe ahead of using generalised legal provisions as an excuse to compromise the safety of individuals, families and communities.

Some of you may think that sounds like fighting talk – and it is. We all know that the law is a blunt instrument and only sets the outside parameters. The “Drive to the Conditions” campaign which I launched last month is an example of trying to deal with this.

This campaign was designed to help people to exercise good judgement about the speed they were travelling at, rather than to drive as though complying with the speed limit was all they had to do to keep safe. The speed limit is an upper limit, not a safe limit.

We can say the same thing about the consumption of drugs and alcohol. Our legal drink driving limit is set at 80ml of alcohol per 100mg of blood. This limit is way higher than some people can even walk safely let alone drive. It is an upper limit not a safe limit.

Now let us think about the driving age. There is all the difference in the world between the individuals comprising any group of 15 year olds. Some will be perfectly capable of using the road network carefully and responsibly – others will not reach that stage until they are quite a bit older. Again the driving age limit is lower than some people can safely drive. It is a lower driving age limit, not a safe driving age limit.

Finally let’s think about vehicles. A warrant of fitness is an assessment of the roadworthiness of the vehicle. We have a fleet of vehicles, with warrants, which is among the oldest in the developed world. There is a huge difference between a 12 year old car and a new car in terms of safety features. The warrant is an outside limit, not a safe limit.

I could go on and on, but I am sure you have the picture. There is a set of standards around the design and use of the transport system which we all need to bear in mind, but additional safety legislation should be a last resort not the first action. Legislation is there to deal with those who cannot be relied upon to exercise good judgement in respect of safety. The exercise of good judgement whether by the regulator, a road controlling authority, a vehicle manufacturer or an individual motorist, pedestrian or cyclist should be our aim. All too often we put compliance with laws ahead of making good judgement in respect of safety.

What is leading me to say this? I challenge any one of you sitting here today to deny that your first thought, if you are tempted to increase your speed, is whether or not you will be caught rather than whether or not you will crash. How many families consider safety over size and power when they buy a car?

A safety culture is one where we stop blaming lack of safety on others and look at ourselves.

A safety culture is one where every driver asks themselves, “How is my driving making others safer?”

A safety culture is one where every network manager, enforcement officer and policy advisor asks “What am I doing to make it safer for everyone on the network?”

A good example of development of a safety culture among network managers is provided by the Safety Management Systems. This approach has now been adopted by more than half of the road controlling authorities.

Rather than imposing a legislative solution – a general duty of safety on local authorities – we have encouraged voluntary take up of Safety Management Systems or SMS. The philosophy driving the introduction of SMS is a belief in the value of developing understanding of all aspects of network safety and collaboration which lead to buy-in from all involved.

SMS is a people oriented process, it includes raising awareness and education, it generates individual commitment to implementing the SMS which results in adoption of the overall safety culture which defines SMS. This leads, ultimately, to a process of continuous improvement of the safety of the network.

When we focus on individuals using the network, and encourage them to ask how their driving is making the network safer, it presupposes that everyone using the network has all the information they need in order to answer that question well. Does everyone have that information? Have we “educated” New Zealand drivers sufficiently? And, if we have provided the information, are people acting on it?

Let’s look at some common behaviour. Merging, overtaking, driving a slow vehicle…

Visitors to New Zealand often comment on our inability to merge effectively. We see queues forming at the end of passing lanes and we daily see expensive time consumed at rush hours at our urban motorways on ramps and joining lanes. Unlike the United Kingdom where people merge effortlessly by signalling clearly and then moving into the space which magically becomes available for them, we often change lanes without signalling or, we signal and then slow right down or even stop, holding up a long line of following traffic, while we wait for a gap to appear in the lane we are waiting to move into. The cumulative effect of most drivers doing this most of the time is, I believe, a significant contributor to our congestion problem. It is also a safety issue.

Why does this happen? Basically, we don’t trust the driver in the lane we are wishing to move into to create space for us. So we slow down or stop and wait. The fact that almost everyone will be following too closely behind the car in front does not help. The “merge like a zip” community campaign in Auckland appeared to make a difference there, but it still slowed traffic. Merging well needs to be a New Zealand wide behaviour. Merging needs to be smoothly and confidently executed. There need be no change in the speed of the traffic while this merging is going on if everyone is signalling, leaving the right amount of space and executing their manoeuvres confidently and expertly.

So, how do we teach people to merge well? How do we give them the confidence that following traffic will let them in? How do we let them know that if this action was performed consistently by everyone we would all spend less time in urban motorway jams? It is an education, not a legislation problem.

Overtaking is another issue. How many of us know how to do this safely and well? I have seen far too many people taking unnecessary risks and very untidy overtaking manoeuvres. If there is a genuine need to overtake then plan and execute the manoeuvre safely and efficiently. The advice given in the booklet The Real Kiwi Driver’s Guide produced by Land Transport NZ and the AA is excellent. If everyone followed this simple and straightforward advice we would make a significant dent in our fatal and serious injury statistics.

So, we know that even since the issue of that booklet which has been widely distributed, we have had some tragic fatal crashes as a direct result of bad overtaking manoeuvres. Did the people who ignored that advice know the correct way to do this and just act unsafely anyway?

How to drive safely when driving a slow vehicle is another skill that some New Zealand motorists appear not to be able to grasp. How hard is it to pull over as soon as you come to a spot where you can do this safely, and let the gathered stream of traffic pass? Most of us would say to do this is just common sense – sense that is not very common I might suggest.

We have managed to change some behaviour; indeed, we have had tremendous success with some behaviour change. Most people do not speed over the limit, or drink over the limit and they generally wear their safety belts and ensure their children and passengers do likewise. Government action in these areas has been vital. We need only to think about compulsory safety belts, speed cameras and compulsory breath testing to see what can be achieved.

It is estimated that without these improvements we would currently have a road toll of around 900 each year. We therefore have around 450 people each year walking around contributing to their communities who would have been dead without this change in behaviour. We must take nothing away from that extra-ordinary success.

We must also take care not to reinvent history. The introduction of compulsory seatbelts took a long time. The requirement to put children into child restraints for example only came after considerable lobbying from parents and child focused organisations. The legislation moved in tandem with the broader community view and the availability of technology.

However, behaviour change is much easier to accomplish than changes in attitudes. And, it is changes in attitudes that will ultimately lead to the development of a sustained safety culture. Attitude change is only brought about by the slow and resource intensive process of education – many will argue that the process of attitude change in relation to safety belts was brought about by the education that went on in schools and pre-schools where “educated” children went home and educated their parents on these matters. The McDonald's restaurant chain should take some satisfaction from many young lives probably by their campaign.

I would argue that we have made most of the gains we can make by behaviour change alone. To achieve further substantial and sustained gains in road safety over the long term, we do need to be working from a strong community driven safety culture. This means bringing the community with us, it means members of the community changing their behaviour because they believe it will improve their own safety, the safety of those they care for and the safety of the wider community.

Here's why... While the mean speed has dropped by around 4km/h over the last five years, the proportion of fatal crashes with the driver travelling too fast for the conditions as a contributor has stopped falling.

The proportion of fatal crashes with driver alcohol as a contributor has risen from an average of 26 percent in 1998/2000 to 30 percent in 2003 and 2004. But, the overall proportion of drivers over the legal alcohol limit in randomised Police compulsory breath testing operations during high alcohol hours of Friday and Saturday nights have fallen from an average of 1.7 percent in 1998/2000 to 0.7 percent in 2004.

While the proportion of people using safety belts has been rising, we are continuing to see fatal crashes where Police estimate that a quarter of the vehicle occupants killed were not restrained at the time of their crash and that 30 percent of those would have been saved had they been wearing a seat belt.

So what does this tell us? We have a situation where most people are complying with the rules most of the time but we have probably reached the limits of what can be achieved by carrying on doing just what we are doing now.

If you ask communities the length and breadth of New Zealand they will tell you that the answer lies in education. But education is a very broad field. We need to identify the specific type of education we need to spur movement from compliance to a greater sense of a safety culture.

Safety is something that is easy to take for granted, until something actually happens to you or someone you know. We need to communicate the safety message in ways that will motivate people to take safety seriously. It cannot be something that happens to “other people” and which “other people” are responsible for. In a safety culture everyone takes responsibility.

In those countries with an established safety culture there has been considerable attention paid to explaining safety implications to the general public. The findings of the TRAFINZ team which will follow this, will give you some excellent examples.

We also have some good examples of our own relating to the “why” of safety. For example the “Down with Speed” campaign from the ACC and the Land Transport Safety Authority a few years ago.

There is also considerable potential for safety messages to be transmitted by work at the community level. Through engagement with the community and identifying what the community sees as safety issues and what the community believes should be done to address them. Robin Dunlop talked to you about this yesterday.

I understand that one of the things that the TRAFINZ team identified from their tour was that countries with a safety culture worked particularly hard at motivating people to become engaged in road safety at the community level.

For example, this can mean doing things like responding positively to requests for small scale safety engineering interventions at the local level so that people have an experience of these interventions working and making their communities safer. They then become much more positively disposed towards road safety initiatives generally.

Many of you sitting here will get opportunities to speed the development of a safety culture through applying broader criteria than an immediate cost benefit analysis to requests for safety engineering interventions which come from the community. I encourage you to take the long view, to think about what it is you can do to help people become advocates for safety - engaging them in planning for the safety of their communities, rather than just leaving this planning in the hands of the experts is certainly a proven strategy.

And finally, of course, all of us here have the opportunity to broaden our focus from trying only to develop ways to make others drive safely and think about what may need to change about our own driving, walking and cycling behaviour to make everyone’s experience of the network safer.