Living Streets Aotearoa, the national walking advocacy organisation, has strongly criticised the National Party's plan to increase local road speeds to 50km/h and state highway speeds to 100km/h.

Living Streets Aotearoa President Tim Jones said "This is a very bad policy. If it is carried out, it will mean more children, more elderly people, and more pedestrians die or are seriously injured on our roads."

“At the very least we should be able to expect government policy to be made on the basis of evidence. The evidence is irrefutable that the human body can only withstand certain forces and those forces are very closely related to speed."

"If you change the speed limit from 30km/h to 50km/h, you quadruple the chance of death to pedestrians. That risk is even higher for children and elderly people. This National Party policy would mean more dead kids."

Tim Jones continued, "By proposing this policy, National is saying that, as a Government, they would be happy to see more New Zealanders die in road accidents, more New Zealanders be seriously injured in road accidents, and more health spending to deal with the consequences of those accidents."

"New Zealanders deserve a transport system that is safe, sustainable and gives them choices," Tim Jones concluded. "National's new policy sends all the wrong signals."

© Scoop Media