A fortnight ago, I wrote in these pages about the fall in New Zealand’s road toll, from 843 deaths in 1973 to a provisional 271 last year. I thought it was an achievement worth celebrating.
But then my colleague Bryce Wilkinson and I put the same numbers beside those of 28 other countries. It puts this achievement into perspective.
On the harmonised World Health Organization series used in our report, which ends in 2019, New Zealand lost 9.6 people per 100,000 to road crashes, nearly twice the OECD comparison average of 5.5. Only five of the countries in our new book did worse: China, Brazil, India, Chile and the United States.
