Blue Jackie: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Blue Jackie: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
[Volume:655;Page:4472] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am delighted to speak on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). It is a bill that I found interesting the first time that it was discussed. There was a very interesting discussion on the issues and the challenges that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee had to face. 
Essentially the bill is about getting unsafe drivers off the road and making our roads safe; that is the prime purpose of the bill. We already have an established mechanism in relation to drink-driving that has been well publicised. Drink-driving is not acceptable and there is a very easy screening test that can be done at random in just a few seconds. But that is not the case at all for drugs and driving. 
I was really interested in the input from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research at the select committee. It presented some fascinating reports that really made the point that drinking and driving and taking drugs and driving cause death. I will quote from a couple of the studies that the institute gave us. One study which was carried out over 4 years from June 2004 to July 2008 was of 826 drivers who had died as a result of motor vehicle accidents and biological samples were able to be taken from these 826 deceased drivers. The deaths were deemed not to be due to medical problems that had occurred prior to the accident or due to intentional harm such as suicide. These accidents occurred on designated roads as well. 
The study found that 80 percent of drivers were culpable for their own accident. That was particularly true for those aged under 20 and over 80. These drivers were all analysed for drugs and alcohol use and these are the interesting statistics: 48 percent had had no alcohol or drugs but over 52 percent had used alcohol and/or drugs; that is over half. Further analysis confirmed that 14 percent had had alcohol and cannabis; 31 percent had used cannabis with or without alcohol or other drugs; 177 drivers had mixed cannabis with other drugs; and 38 percent or 316 drivers had used alcohol or cannabis or both but no other drug. The most commonly detected drugs were methamphetamine 36 percent; methadone 13 percent; and morphine 7 percent. 
We asked the Institute of Environmental Science and Research how many innocent people had died as a result of drivers taking drugs. It came back to us with a further evaluation of the data. In the 5 years from 2003 to 2007 it looked at 90 people who had died in crashes where drugs were cited as a contributing factor. Of those people 53 were drug-affected drivers who died as a result of their own driving and having taken drugs but 28 were passengers of those drivers and a further nine were other road users. So out of the 90 deaths 37 were innocent victims; that is over 40 percent. 
That is truly terrifying and that is why this legislation is so important as a way to ensure that drivers can be tested for drugs through the impairment method which has already been described. It is not yet a screening test. We do not have a screening test. There was some debate about whether a saliva test could be used as a screening test but that was considered to be unreasonable under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We considered it to be invasive and that insufficient evidence was available to justify that measure. So until we have the technology for a quick screening test that can be used for drug taking the impairment test will do. The other measures today mean that we can get drug-drivers and drink-drivers off our roads and keep our roads safe. I commend this bill to the House.