Shearer David: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Shearer David: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18056] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I appreciate your choice Mr Chairman Roy and it was a difficult choice because of the talent standing here waiting to be called. 
In referring to Part 2 of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill I would like to go to the consequential amendments which are in clause 97 and in particular to the part of schedule 1 under the first heading which is about the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Rule 1999. I come back to some of the comments made earlier in the debate about the age of driver licensing. It may well be that the public out there overall is supportive of putting up the driving age. That is possibly because we have not adequately explained the issues around doing that and the inconvenience it will cause to young people particularly young people going to sports practice as Louisa Wall explained in her contribution earlier. She talked of what it meant for her to be able to do that. Also I do not think we have explained sufficiently the point about the evidence. The gut reaction is to quietly up the age and to expect that upping the age will somehow bring about a lower death toll. Actually there is no evidence to support that at all. 
Labour finds itself on the same side as Federated Farmers which is rare. National is on the other side of the fence from Federated Farmers. I completely understand Federated Farmers’ point of view. Overwhelmingly and the Chair will appreciate this people in Southland support the age remaining at 15 and not being raised to 16. Here is some of the evidence behind that. In 1986 15 to 19-year-olds caused 16.9 percent of the deaths on our roads. In 2006 that figure had dropped by 5 percent down to just 11.7 percent. There is no doubt that young drivers on our roads now are better drivers. They are certainly not perfect by any means. As we heard before they are still in the higher percentile of those causing accidents. 
When I made a contribution earlier I said that even in countries where the age-limit is higher and the United States is one of those countries the death rate of young drivers is much much higher than it is in New Zealand. So simply raising the age will not be a cure-all that brings down the deal toll. In fact we know fairly conclusively that no matter what the death toll is the 2 years after drivers get their licence is the most dangerous time—certainly for those under the age of 25. Steve Chadwick in her contribution earlier on made a couple of very important points about our approach to this particular issue. If we have better driver education if we extend the learner period and if we drop the permitted blood-alcohol concentration for the under-20s down to zero then we have a much better chance of bringing that 11.7 percent down much further. 
In this short contribution I just wanted to come back to schedule 1 which outlines the raising of the age-limit from 15 to 16 and 6 months. There are some other details or complications around that as well. I want to point out that in no way does the evidence support it. In fact it will seriously disadvantage many youngsters who are very responsible and who are driving cars responsibly in the countryside. Thank you.