We continued to collaborate with the New Zealand Police, Te Manatū Waka, local government, Worksafe and others to implement Road to Zero, the national road safety strategy to 2030. We are on track to achieve the 2030 target of reducing deaths and serious injuries on our roads by 40% and are making progress in the delivery of Road to Zero actions. While the number of deaths and serious injuries are still unacceptably high, this year deaths and serious injuries reduced compared to the previous year.
We launched a new public awareness campaign to gain the public’s buy-in to Road to Zero and Vision Zero which, within a month of launched, achieved record levels of engagement on social media. The campaign started a new conversation, encouraging audiences to think differently about road safety.
The Road to Zero Speed and Infrastructure Programme focuses on investing more in safety treatments and in infrastructure improvements, and introducing a new approach to tackling unsafe speeds. We achieved our target of starting four new major intersection safety improvement projects this year. However, delays in confirming funding and starting procurement meant we could only start four of our five planned road corridor infrastructure safety improvement projects. We continue to identify ways to speed up our delivery of infrastructure safety improvements to contribute toward a sustained and long-term reduction in deaths and serious injuries.
Over 2021/22 we reviewed the process for implementing speed limit restrictions on the state highway network and introduced new rules, guidance and speed management plans to reduce the time needed to make speed changes.
The new Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2022 is now in force. This rule establishes a speed management planning process that considers how safety infrastructure, safety cameras and speed limits can be combined effectively to achieve a safer transport system.
The contentious nature of speed limit reductions has delayed the ongoing programme of public engagement around reducing speed limits. We needed to spend longer than we expected on community engagement, which delayed the delivery of speed limit reviews. As a result, we didn’t achieve our target of treating at least 500km of the network with reduced speed limits.
Safety cameras discourage excessive speeds, improve compliance with posted speed limits, and reduce deaths and serious injuries. The Safety Camera System Programme will deliver a new approach to safety cameras on the roads, including transitioning their ownership and operation from New Zealand Police to Waka Kotahi. This year we established governance structures and leadership roles, completed a high-level process design, and selected a preferred technology supplier.
Our new rail regulatory risk framework uses international best practice to determine how best to improve safety in the industry. The framework is evidence driven and based on intelligence and risk assessment – its application providing the regulator and rail licensees with valuable insights. We selected a group of rail participants to pilot a safety assessment using the framework, to gather data about rail participant types and evaluate the framework’s effectiveness. The data will support a systems approach to the regulation of industry and enhance rail safety overall.
We’re committed to a risk-based approach to health and safety – both within our organisation and across the transport sector. Our safety improvement work over 2021/22 focused on revised safety policies and procedures, dedicated critical risk improvement projects focused on road worker safety and temporary traffic management, and mental health and wellbeing.
Our significant incident frequency rate for our staff and contractors has reduced. The rate includes near misses that could have caused serious or life-threatening injuries and allows us to identify and assess a broad range of impacts and systematic issues.
We extended Kōrero Mai, our system for recording significant incidents, so incidents involving our agents and contractors can also be reported
