NZ is simply far too soft on people who drive dangerously and display a lack of duty of care whilst controlling what is essentially a deadly weapon in the wrong hands. As an ex-prosecutor, I can say that people who cause catastrophic incidents (aside from the outright anti-social/high risk types and fatigued drivers - more on those later) tend to fall into three categories: the first group is the young, inexperienced, and stupid whose brains basically aren't mature enough yet to do a lot of things but are allowed to drive a car; the second group is your typical middle-aged boomer "I am a hard working Kiwi" loser who thinks that saving 5 seconds is worth killing somebody (most of these people, like most violent criminals, are blokes); the last is the old, slow-reacting and/or medically unfit who shouldn't be on the road. To be fair, the final group almost never deliberately do anything dangerous -- they should just have been medically ruled unfit to drive or should have just stayed off the roads for the good of everyone. Amongst these three groups, the last are at least decent people at heart.

There is simply an underlying refusal to acknowledge some of the societal factors that drive much of the inhuman (note, I don't mean inhumane), unthinking, self-centred, and pointless risk-taking by the first two groups: the almost worshipping of the archetypal thrill-seeking male who does everything on instinct, as opposed to thinking and deliberating through the consequences of any proposed action. Add to that the value we place upon being "first" and the general societal tolerance toweards unhinged aggression. If you want to simplify it, just call it toxic masculinity. But pointing that out (even as a guy) is apparently just male bashing. These two groups are in their own way quite closely-related to the anti-social losers that the NZTA/Police describe as high risk drivers: the drugged, drunk, unlicensed, recidivist (overwhelmingly male) offenders who may or may not also be running away from the cops.

Many of the factors that afflict the high risk group also touch on the other two groups. Quite simply, can someone tell me why, for example, a supposedly decent kid from a decent family needs to be out with his mates at 4am? Unless you work shifts, provided you have a job, why wouldn't you be sleeping at home at that time, weeknight or weekend?

Every time the high risk group plus the other two groups get involved in an accident, I hear the same predictable responses. But no one seems to ask why females so overwhelmingly do not feature within such groups by comparison. No one seems to ask why we allow people to drive absolute crappers on the road that don't even have seatbelt sensors that will beep so much that it makes not wearing a seatbelt unbearable. In terms of the fatigued drivers, with the NZTA's lax regulation of the commercial driving industry, one can expect that logbook rigging is rife and your average Kiwi just has no sense of when they should take a break.

In short, fix up people's attitude towards others, life generally, and fix up the blokes first. Only then will we go a long way to solving the road safety issues. Add these things to getting old and crappy cars off the road (heavens forbid that people don't have the right to drive whatever they want and that they might need to save/pay a bit more for a car -- christ, what will people do without 3 cups of barista coffees a day or a road trip every long weekend?) and making people demonstrate their ability and fitness to be driving on the road regularly, if we are truly serious about not accepting road deaths.

Otherwise, most of the anguish and talk is no better than your average American's supposedly heartfelt words after every mass shooting.