New Zealand ended 2024 with the lowest rate of road deaths per head of population in a century, provisional figures have shown.<\/p>\n
The country recorded 289 deaths on the roads last year, the first time the annual road toll has been below 300 since 2014. When population size is taken into account, it equates to 5.4 road deaths per 100,000 – the lowest rate since the 1920s.<\/p>\n
\u201cFifty-two fewer New Zealanders were killed this year than last year in a crash and, if you look at the size of our population, it\u2019s the lowest rate of road deaths we\u2019ve seen in a century,\u201d said AA road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen.<\/p>\n
In 1923 the population was under 1.4 million and the road toll was 59, or less than 4.5 road deaths per 100,000 people.<\/p>\n
Dylan said the exact reason for the fall was difficult to pin down but highlighted an increased focus by police on drunk driving and speed enforcement as possible factors and said the tough economic times could have had an impact as \u201cpeople tend to drive less when money is tighter.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cRoad deaths are a source of pain for hundreds of families each year, and many simply don\u2019t need to happen. It would be great if what happened this year was the start of a new downward trend for our road toll.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, despite the overall good year on the roads, there were nearly 40 deaths in the month of December \u2013 the worst month of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of fatalities in December was concerning, especially after we\u2019d done so well for most of the year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we all take care to drive to the conditions, stick to the rules and look-out for one another, we can give ourselves the best chance of having an even safer year on the roads in 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Zealand ended 2024 with the lowest rate of road deaths per head of population in a century, provisional figures have shown. The country recorded 289 deaths on the roads last year, the first time the annual road toll has been below 300 since 2014. When population size is taken into account, it equates to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":14963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}