The issue of overseas drivers has flared again, and for very good reason. Five appeared in Otago courts on Monday after a weekend of death and injury.
The five included a Chinese tourist who appeared in the Dunedin District Court charged with dangerous driving causing the death of a 5-year-old girl on Saturday.
In Queenstown, two Chinese men and an Indian man were convicted of driving dangerously, fined and banned from driving on New Zealand roads.
Another Chinese tourist admitted careless driving causing injury to three other tourists.
Yesterday a German driver was charged after a fatality near Springston, Canterbury and police confirmed the driver of a rental car killed near Greta Valley, North Canterbury last week was a Chinese tourist.
The statistics are mounting, in part because more tourists are renting cars.
The latest figures (2013) show overseas drivers involved in 11 fatal crashes (the overseas driver had primary fault in all of them) and 90 serious-injury crashes (78 with primary overseas driver fault).
Some people point to the death and injury toll, comment legitimately on the poor driving standards of many New Zealanders and say 11 does not seem particularly high in relation to the full road toll - 253 fatalities in 2013.
But that is 4.3% of fatalities, when foreign drivers are a far smaller proportion of the driving population than that.
The Westland and Queenstown Lakes figures are instructive.
The proportion of overseas drivers in those districts is higher than elsewhere and this is reflected in the figures for crashes involving an overseas driver, 37% and 24% respectively.
这块地方游客集中,本地人又相对其他地方少,游客事故占事故总数的比率明显上升,达到37% /24% (应该分别是死亡事故和重伤事故)。 你把游客人数放到全国范围去比较,立刻就稀释了,也只有小地方才能看的出究竟。
But, surely, they do not make up anything like that proportion of motorists given the number of local drivers and New Zealand tourists and visitors.
Foreign-licensed drivers from countries which, like New Zealand, are signatories to the United Nations' Geneva Convention on Road Traffic have the right to drive here.
New Zealand can hardly turn around and demand obligations which its citizens do not face overseas.
这个比较麻烦,原来还有联合国条约在里面。看来短期要改变是很困难了。知道的人可以多说说。
But one issue is that driving conditions vary enormously.
Just as a driver from Otago or Southland might be overwhelmed by traffic in Berlin, Bangkok or Beijing, a driver from Hong Kong would find the characteristics and hazards of our open roads strange.
Empty, twisting two-way carriageways would be novel and present different challenges.
Licensing standards also vary. In many places, they will not be as stringent as they are becoming in New Zealand. 这个说的是某些国家,管理不严格。。。。
There are, as well, a range of international attitudes to driving safely.
New Zealand still has a long way to go to match some countries but in this area is well ahead of most of the developing world or southern Europe.
While keeping left is a matter of concern when much of the world drives on the right, failing to keep left is far from the only cause of catastrophic crashes.
Some of the overseas drivers in crashes, too, come from left-hand drive countries - Australia, Britain, India, Japan, for instance.
What will be required to minimise the hazards are measures across several fronts.
这些措施都能起到效果,但都是教育为主,见效会很缓慢。
There is keeping left, and rental car companies have introduced steering wheel stickers to act as prompts.
The companies need to go further and not prevaricate on blacklists for drivers denied contracts.
They also need to conduct at least rudimentary driving checks if they have doubts about a driver's basic ability.
Overseas visitors also need to be told, even if via in-flight videos or rental company presentations, just how dangerous our roads are.
This must be achieved with hard information about specific crashes and their physical and human impact and specific examples of what goes wrong.
As New Zealand Transport Authority southern regional director Jim Harland said, quite a lot is happening.
But that can only be a start and change needs to be accelerated.
Roading improvements would certainly help, and it is encouraging the Government agrees median barriers prevent crashes.
Obviously, it will take time before more are introduced, and rope median barriers, fences, rumble strips, more left arrows on roads, more safe stopping places to take photographs and other measures need to be expedited.
Tourists from certain countries (right hand side driving or bad driving culture) must be accompanied by nz full at all time, or take a nz practical exam should fix it.作者: bintoo 时间: 2015-2-25 08:58:17
我能想到的一个折中方案,就是强制海外驾照租车前参加一个学习班,一个小时就够了。可以外包给某个机构做这事,常驻机场,跟所有租车公司挂钩。母语教学,游客随到随学,比简单派发宣传资料的被动学习效果好,也不跟法律冲突,对游客行程影响也不大。如果收比如50块一个人,还能解决就业问题。作者: OK 时间: 2015-2-26 15:33:24