There's been a lot of news in the media around foreign drivers being involved with fatal accidents this week. Apparently they make up 5% of all fatal accidents, though I haven't seen anywhere what percentage of drivers they are. I suspect they're over-represented, but I don't know by how much.

A short information sheet and test doesn't sound unreasonable to me - say a few pages of instructions then a 5-10 minute test to check you understood it. My wife argued said it should target higher risk groups, such as Asians who seem to feature highly in statistics, and people who drive on the right. There would be a fair bit of overhead if the tests are given in person, staff training, space to do it, etc. If it was an online test then every rental car agency both standalone and in airports would need computers or tablets and space for people to sit for the tests. I guess you could get people to do it in advance, at home, but that opens it up to abuse.

That won't fix the problem by itself: driving is largely automatic and people who drive on the right or drive badly will keep doing the same thing they always do, especially when tired or under pressure. Better signage may help, stickers in cars (which I think are there already) may help, and you could even go as far as to have automated announcements in cars. I suspect it will take a combination of things to make any difference.

This ignores the 95% of problems. New Zealanders are impatient, aggressive, selfish, poorly trained drivers with low levels of driving skill. Every time I go anywhere on the open road, even to work at 6:45am, you see some idiot driving as quickly as they can, weaving in and our of traffic. Tailgating is virtually a national pass-time. We had a close call recently where one wheel went off the road and we skidded all over the road, if someone had been tailgating us it'd have been a major accident not just a frightening event that evened up not causing any problems.

The roads aren't all up to the demands of modern cars travelling at high speeds. The phrase "drive co-operatively, not competitively" has been rattling around in my head for a while. If everyone drives in a way as to maximise traffic flow each individual will get where they're going faster as a result.

As a major source of untimely death (though as far as I can tell it's well behind health issues) I suspect this needs even more focus than it's currently getting.

News stories:
 - Drivers keys confiscated by public.