Media Release

July 17,2019

New Zealand driver safety advocate and motor sport legend Greg Murphy says better driver training must be part of Road to Zero.

Murphy said he is meeting with the Associate Minister of Transport next week, to keep driving home the message about “training NZ drivers better” to the decision makers.

“If New Zealand is going to follow the lead of these road to zero countries that the minister refers to then far better driver training must also become a priority because most of these countries have a far stronger focus on training drivers than we do in New Zealand.”

“Many of these leading countries are also doing mandatory training in controlled environments. New Zealand needs to be far better equipped and invested in training our drivers so we are far more aware and more skilled behind the wheel.”

“I applaud the work that the Minister is doing, but as a country we cannot and should never simply accept that people are just going to keep on making mistakes and crash.”

“Yes people make mistakes, but the consequences of making mistakes in reality can be fatal, if they have been taught what to do when mistakes happen, or better still have training that creates better awareness so mistakes aren’t happening as much, they have a far better chance of survival. You can’t gain experience if you are dead.”

“We have safer cars, but most people don’t even know how the technology like ABS works – you need to learn about it and experience how it works in a controlled environment – that’s training, not by reading the manual or watching a video.”

“Drivers make the decisions – not the cars. We must have better, skilled, safer drivers on our roads.”

ends

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