This week, three volunteer fire brigade chiefs have reiterated a plea for drivers to avoid the distraction of checking or using mobile phones while driving.
Fire chiefs of Piopio, Maniaiti/Benneydale and Ōtorohanga volunteer brigades say the use of cellphones while driving continues to be a problem in their areas.
Piopio brigade chief Darren Cathie said with a lot of mobile providers, there was bad reception from a few kilometres south of Piopio, through the Awakino Gorge most of the way to Mōkau.
“Depending upon the provider, suddenly you may get within a few kilometres of Piopio and you get reception.
“Your phone starts beeping, notifying you of messaging and missed calls and what have you – it can be very distracting,” he said.
If this happened, he said drivers needed to ignore their phones until they could pull over safely.
“Stop for a break on the side of the road, or perhaps remember that you’re only a few kilometres to Piopio where you can stop for a coffee.”
Darren said drivers having their eyes down, checking newly arrived texts on a phone, was obviously a recipe for disaster.
“It doesn’t take much to drift across the centreline or off the road.”
Benneydale Volunteer Fire Brigade chief Murray Paterson agrees phone distraction is a major safety issue.
“On occasion, we have had our suspicions when we’ve found a phone sitting on a crash victim’s lap, or beside them on the passenger seat, sometimes with the cover open. But of course, we can never prove that using their phone while driving was the cause of the crash.
“If you ask a driver, they will always deny it. It’s just the same as when you speak to a truck driver following a crash, somebody you suspect was going too fast for the conditions. They’ll always say something like, ‘hell no, I wasn’t going fast at all’.
“It’s just like driving with bald tyres. We see cars in the ditch or the hedge which have two, or even four, bald tyres. But it’s not for us to determine the cause of a crash.
“What a fire chief can say is that in all these cases, it’s about people taking some self-responsibility for how they are acting with a dangerous weapon.
“And considering the mass and velocity of a car being driven along the road, there is no doubt in my mind that the term ‘dangerous weapon’ is accurate.”
Ōtorohanga Volunteer Fire Brigade chief Neville King can similarly not prove that texting or speaking on mobiles has been the cause of various crashes he has attended over the years, but has good cause to suspect it.
“We all see drivers texting and speaking on phones when they shouldn’t be. From the brigade’s point of view, it is quite simple: we want undistracted motorists.”
Data released by the NZ Transport Agency shows using a cellphone while driving has been a factor in 15 fatal crashes from 2016 to 2020. In 2020, there were two fatal crashes where phone use was a factor, three serious crashes, 68 minor crashes and 88 non-injury crashes.
