New Zealand's annual road toll for 2023 is lower than it was in 2022, but AA says the longer-term picture "shows tragic incidents continuing to cast a severe shadow over the country's roads".
Provisional figures reveal 343 people lost their lives in a crash in 2023, 31 less than the 374 who died in 2022.
"Any year where the road toll is lower than the previous one is positive, but we are still tracking at nearly a death every day," said AA road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen.
"This is still well above the number of road deaths there were a decade ago," he added.
Road fatalities from 2013 to 2023:
- 2013 - 253
- 2014 - 293
- 2015 - 317
- 2016 – 327
- 2017 - 378
- 2018 – 350
- 2019 - 350
- 2020 - 318
- 2021 - 318
- 2022 - 374
- 2023 – 343
Thomsen said more needs to be done to make roads safer, including consistent high-levels of testing for drunk drivers, introducing roadside drug testing, more use of alcohol interlocks in vehicles of high-risk drunk drivers and upgrades and improvements to highways.
Thomsen said the police's road-testing campaign in 2023 was "hugely encouraging".
The campaign saw police conduct more than 2.6 million tests, over a million more than 2022.
"Breath testing has an important role to play in road safety – a high police presence is a strong deterrent for would-be drunk drivers and a safety net there to catch those who have had too much to drink," Thomsen said.
He argued the government must do more to reach its Road to Zero aspirations.
"If we had the same per capita rate of road deaths as in Australia, there would have been less than 250 people killed in New Zealand this year."
A recent AA study showed how upgrading roads can also help reach Road to Zero goals.
The study showed, on average, there was a 37 percent drop in deaths and serious injuries on both the new and old roads compared to when there was a single route.
The holiday road toll sits at 15, already the same as 2021/2022, and has two days remaining.
Police said "speed, alcohol and drugs and distraction are still the main causes of death and serious injury. Wearing your seatbelt can also be the difference between surviving a crash and not."
