Speech for Kids in Safe Seats Car Seat Safety Conference

This conference has the very important and worthwhile mission of improving the safety of New Zealand children.  

Can I thank Plunket in particular for organising and hosting this event. Many New Zealand families have benefited from Plunket's work for more than 100 years, and my own family is no exception. I have three young children, aged five and under, so this topic has personal significance for me.  

Today I want to tell you about the government's plans for making our roads safer, especially for children.  

It's worth pointing out that over the last 30 years we have made a lot of progress in tackling the road toll.  

Attitudes towards safety have come a long way. When I was young:

Seatbelts weren't compulsory

We didn't have any child restraints. We used to just pile into the backseat of the saloon, with the baby basket lying unrestrained on the floor.

Technology has helped too with the development of safer cars.

But in recent years, improvements in the road toll have stalled. Our progress has been slow and we now lag behind many countries we like to compare ourselves with.  

Last year 384 New Zealanders died on our roads. If we had the same rate as in Australia, that number would be 298. 

If we had the same rate as the UK it would be just 186.  

It's also a sad fact that New Zealand has one of the highest child road fatality rates in the OECD, and that many of these tragedies are avoidable.  

This is why the Minister of Transport Steven Joyce launched the Safer Journeys strategy last month. This is a 10 year plan with a broad range of ideas to cut the road toll. It looks across the entire system, including roads, road use, speed and the safety of vehicles.  

The Government has already agreed to a number of actions to improve the safety of younger drivers. These include raising the driving age to 16 and making the restricted driving test more difficult.  

Another package will go to Cabinet soon, aimed at reducing road deaths and injuries caused by alcohol.  

Already we've passed new laws on cellphone use while driving, drugged driving and illegal street racing.  

Better roads will help too. The government has identified nine roads of national significance that are of special importance to the country, in terms of economic development as well as improving safety. These roads will be given priority funding with nearly $11 billion to be invested over the next 10 years. 

As the local MP for Otaki I can tell you we have horrendous traffic problems on SH1 heading north from Wellington, especially on public holidays, and plenty of accident black spots.  

Thankfully the government has now made this route one of nine roads of national significance, and given the green light for Transmission Gully to go ahead. This is great news and I'm looking forward to fewer accidents and fatalities.  

This work across the system should make a real difference in bringing down our high level of fatalities.

Of course, on top of this the government also recognises how important child restraints are. Car seats, booster seats and child safety harnesses can make a real difference when used properly.

But again, progress has been slow in recent years. We have seen less improvement in passenger safety for five to nine year olds than for younger children. 

Standard seatbelts and seats in cars are designed to fit adults. While a child might seem safe if they're just buckled in, the belt will often cross their neck and stomach rather than their shoulders and hips. 

This can be highly dangerous - it increases their risk of injury in a crash, and they can slide right out of the seatbelt. 

One of the actions in Safer Journeys is to reverse this concerning trend, and bring our restraint laws in line with international best practice.  

Our current laws require five to seven year olds to use a restraint if one is present in the vehicle. There are no requirements for children eight years and older to use restraints like booster seats. 

We will be considering whether these standards should be extended, to bring us into line with what many other countries are doing.  

There is a lot of work to be done in this area before we make any decision. We would need to consider whether to use a child's age or height as the measure, and whether to introduce the requirement in stages. 

As a first step we could require all children up to the age of eight to use a child restraint. Later we could extend this so that all children up to their 10th birthday or 148 cm in height, whichever comes first, use an appropriate restraint.  

Educating parents and caregivers on the proper use of restraints will be a priority. The key message is that restraints only work properly when the right size for the child and the vehicle is used, and when the child is correctly positioned and strapped in.  

We also need to improve our data and research into this area, because our current information is based on wearing rates rather than correct usage.  

One-off regional surveys have found that between 45 and 65 percent of families are not using child restraints correctly. This is a worry. More data on this would help us know how prevalent this is across the country.  

The government is also supporting Safe2Go, a programme to help educate parents on how to use and install child restraints properly. I understand you'll be hearing more about Safe2Go during the conference. 

So there is a lot of work underway by the government, but we've always been clear that any changes to road safety rules need to have public support.  

If they don't have that buy-in, they are much less likely to work because at the end of the day the government can only do so much. It's up to all of us to make the roads a safer place.  

This shared responsibility is also reflected in the efforts of the people at this conference. I want to thank you again for your dedication to increasing the proper use of child restraints. Your work is greatly appreciated and it does make a real difference, saving lives and preventing tragedies.  

I wish you all the best for the rest of the conference.