Motorsport legend and road safety advocate Greg Murphy is fed up with the Government's lack of action after another horror week on New Zealand's roads.
Over the last four days, nine people have died while in the last 24 hours, a fatal crash in New Plymouth left two people dead, while 11 others were injured in crashes across the North Island.
Murphy told Newshub there is no respect for driving in New Zealand, with Kiwis consistently using their phones while behind the wheel.
"Just stand on a corner anywhere at any given time and watch how many people are using their mobile phones while driving. That's not respect for driving, and certainly isn't respect for other road users," Murphy said.
Murphy told Newshub the current road safety messages are "terrible" and too focused on speed, which has resulted in people not listening.
"Speed is just the tunnel vision the Government thinks is going to fix this issue and it's not going to," he said.
"It's a very simple process. Driving is a complex task, the majority of people are not prepared to drive a motor vehicle safely on our roads because they are not prepared to do it."
Murphy added he sees thousands of drivers across New Zealand every day that shouldn't have access to a motor vehicle because they're not prepared for it.
He describes the deaths on New Zealand's roads over the last four days as a "blip" that will happen because "nothing has changed".
"It's just fate. It's the way things are going to be because nothing has changed and there are a lot of people on the roads making a lot of mistakes," he said.
"We're not listening because the messages are so bad and we're actually not teaching and training people to do a better job and understand what they need to be doing to be safe behind the wheel."
Murphy was also critical of the Defensive Driver Course, which he said Kiwis use just to get six months off their restricted license rather than trying to become a better driver or to be safer on the roads.
He told Newshub Governments over a period of time are "not listening" and spending billions of dollars on road safety to achieve "absolutely nothing".
"They spend billions and billions of taxpayers' dollars on road safety to achieve absolutely nothing," he said.
"It's appalling, and we should all be disgraced by it, but we all as New Zealanders, also have a responsibility and we are not taking notice."
Murphy had a blunt message for Kiwis who think they won't become a "statistic" on New Zealand's roads.
"If you think you're not going to become a statistic, then you're in la, la, land. You need to pay attention. When you are driving, that is all you are doing, you are driving. You are respecting yourself by not being distracted," Murphy said.
"If we did that, we threw away our mobile phones and got rid of those things and actually paid attention to driving when we are driving, things would change markedly."
