Locke Keith: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18050] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 Just following on from the last speaker I tell the Committee that the Green Party also supports much better access to good driving programmes. In some ways the younger people we are talking about here have more recent training have to study the road code etc. to get their licence have a learner-driver period and are able to develop skills at a young age compared with people who are a bit older like many of us here—me in particular. I got my driver’s licence 44 years ago and on no occasion in those 44 years have I been required to do any additional driving course to do a defensive driving course to look at the road code or to do any tests—absolutely nothing. 
We have provisions in Part 1—for instance in clause 52 “Compulsory attendance at driving improvement course or dangerous goods course” whereby the court may order compulsory driving tests and things like that. It is good that those provisions are in the bill because if people have committed offences then they clearly are not up to it in terms of safe driving. Sure they should be put through a course but what about the rest of the community? There should be courses available and encouragement for people to attend them. As the last speaker Steve Chadwick said the Government is cutting back on funding for courses—in this case for younger people. But there should be more financial provision for driving courses for the whole community and encouragement for people to attend them. At the moment these courses apply only to those at a very young age when getting their licence or to those at an older age whose sight might be going a bit and they can take a test as a lot of older people do. But in the many decades in between there is no requirement to do anything or any encouragement to do anything and I think that is pretty bad. 
There is a provision in this part about heavy traffic which states there can be a restriction on having heavy traffic on certain roads. Well it is also good that that provision is there but what is the Government doing and what has it done over the last little while? It has extended the allowable weights for trucks so that we have bigger trucks and longer trucks on roads. That provision has come in from the Government’s decisions. A very unsafe environment has been created where the longer and heavier the trucks are the more danger there is on the road. Obviously the longer the truck is the more difficult it is to overtake it and more cars will be taking the risk of overtaking a long truck and occasionally being caught up in a head-on collision with people dying which is what happens too frequently on our roads. No matter which braking system heavy trucks have on them the heavier a truck is the more difficult it will be to stop it. It will take that bit longer to stop it which creates more dangers. Often I have noticed unfortunately that one of the problems we have on our roads is that people drive too close including truck drivers. I often see trucks driving a very short distance behind much smaller cars and I think: “Oh God what happens if that car in front stops very suddenly?” which now and again happens. The heavier our trucks are the more we get into that problem of accidents. 
With those few comments I say that I really support having much more resource devoted to making driving courses available to members of the community. Hopefully the courses will be free to give them that encouragement.