New Zealand’s DUI road risk is changing

A serious problem with driving under the influence is now being seen in New Zealand. For the first time ever, drivers under the influence of drugs have been involved in a greater number of serious crashes than those under the influence of alcohol. As a result, more people were killed as a result of drug use than alcohol use in road crashes in New Zealand during 2017. This worrying fact highlights the problem with illicit drug use in New Zealand. The result of the research into road deaths has been revealed
June 22, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

A serious problem with driving under the influence is now being seen in New Zealand. For the first time ever, drivers under the influence of drugs have been involved in a greater number of serious crashes than those under the influence of alcohol. As a result, more people were killed as a result of drug use than alcohol use in road crashes in New Zealand during 2017. This worrying fact highlights the problem with illicit drug use in New Zealand.

The result of the research into road deaths has been revealed by the Automobile Association (AA), which says that New Zealand police should be equipped with drug testing kits to help address the problem. Kits that use saliva to test for drug use amongst drivers have been employed successfully in some parts of Australia as well as Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and the UK for some time and the technology is now well proven. At present New Zealand police have to have strong reason to suspect drug use by drivers and even then, can only carry out tests based on whether a driver is physically capable of walking and turning.

According to the AA, there were 79 fatal road crashes involving drug use by drivers in 2017, compared with 70 fatal crashes involving drivers under the influence of alcohol. This highlights the increasing scale of the issue as in 2016, there were 59 fatal crashes involving drug use by drivers compared with 67 in which drivers were under the influence of alcohol.

The research shows that cannabis and methamphetamine are the most common drugs detected in the case of driving under the influence. The latter drug has seen a particular growth in use in New Zealand in recent years.

The AA is calling for the proven saliva testing kits to be employed in New Zealand and for officers to be able to carry out random testing by the roadside in a bid to tackle the issue more effectively.

Related Content

  • PPRS Nice 2018: maintenance moves mountains
    June 22, 2018
    Strategic maintenance was a major theme at the second Pavement Preservation and Recycling Summit in Nice, France. The world is changing, mobility is changing and so roads must change and adapt for the future.” With this brief statement, Jacques Tavernier opened the second PPRS Summit. “At the same time there is a growing awareness of poor or non-existent maintenance for highways. The question for this conference is how to adapt road maintenance in the face of this challenge,” said Tavernier, in his role as
    Read More
  • UK trialling hazard warning technology
    November 26, 2024
    Results from a project by the UK’s department of transport and AECOM – using Heads-Up technology from Acusensus, has underlined scale of distracted driving and lack of seatbelt use.
    Read More
  • US road crashes increasing for 2015?
    August 19, 2015
    There is mounting concern in the US at the high number of crashes during 2015. For the first seven months of 2015, there has been a 14% increase in the number of traffic fatalities compared with the same period in 2014. The data shows that there were 18,630 road deaths in this period, with over 2.2 million serious injuries. This is a notable increase and should the trend continue it will mean that 2015 will have had the highest rate of road deaths since 2007. The cause (or causes) of the increase in road de
    Read More
  • Kenya seeing gain in road safety?
    May 17, 2018
    Newly available crash data suggests an improvement in road safety in Kenya. In the period from January 1st to May 14th 2018, there were 1,095 traffic incidents, compared with 1,139 for the same period in 2017. The number of people being killed or seriously injured also dropped to 4,193, compared with 4,676 for the same period in the previous year. The figures were released by Kenya’s National Transport and Safety Authority, which said that primary factors involved in crashes included driving under the influ
    Read More

Highlighted Content