Blue Jackie: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Blue Jackie: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17802] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak to the second reading of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. This Government is serious about providing the right levers for building safer communities and that definitely includes safety on our roads. The bill forms part of the Government’s road safety strategy Safer Journeys which covers the period of the decade 2010 to 2020. The long-term goal for road safety in New Zealand is set out in the Safer Journeys vision: “A safe road system that is increasingly free of death and serious injury”. This vision recognises that although it will be impossible to prevent all road crashes from happening we can stop many of them resulting in death and serious injuries. The main provisions of the bill will result in this indeed—fewer injuries from death and serious injuries. 
The world is a very different place from when I first learnt to drive at age 16. There are far more cars on the road now and the cars are considerably more powerful. It is estimated there are over three million vehicles on the road at the current time. That is three times as many as when I learnt to drive. I absolutely support the raising of the driving age to 16. I believe that the world today is a much more dangerous place to drive in than it was all those years ago when I first drove. 
The issue of road safety needs to be addressed. The fact is New Zealand still lags behind many other countries in road safety and the Safer Journeys approach addresses this. It is aimed at improving the safety of young drivers and giving the courts more options and tougher sanctions for serious or repeat driving offenders. I would like to focus on the serious or repeat driving offenders. There is quite a frightening statistic that 72 percent of all alcohol-related deaths on our roads are caused by drivers who have either a prior drink-driving conviction or are more than 50 percent over the current adult legal limit for drink-driving. That is truly terrifying. Recently released Ministry of Transport figures showed that in 2009 88 deaths—or 72 percent of all alcohol-related deaths—were caused by just 73 drivers who were either at least 50 percent over the current drink-driving limit or had a previous conviction for drink-driving. Of those 88 deaths 34 were caused by drivers with a previous conviction and 50 of those deaths were caused by drivers who were at least double the current legal limit. 
This bill is designed to help get that small but dangerous group of high-risk drivers off the road. It will do that in a number of ways: by subjecting repeat drink-driving offenders to a blood-alcohol concentration of zero for 3 years after they receive their licence back; providing a new penalty regime for breaches of the proposed zero drink-driving limit; allowing courts the option of requiring repeat or serious drink-driving offenders to use alcohol interlocks after a mandated 90-day disqualification; and of course doubling the prison sentence for dangerous driving causing death. 
The offenders at this end of the spectrum are the Government’s first target because of their high contribution to fatality statistics and there is this hard core of drink-drivers who cannot separate their drinking from their driving. Obviously the answer is for them to stop drinking but the answer also partly lies in technologies such as alcohol interlocks which can prevent those people from driving. It is absolutely important that we no longer tolerate continued and high-level drink-driver offending and this bill will address that issue. Although there is no silver bullet this bill will go some way towards helping to decrease road fatalities. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.