road deaths in New Zealand have significantly declined<\/a> in the past four years, and warned against a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden spike.<\/p>\n\u201cHaving said that, when we think about the common causes for these kinds of traumatic crashes, four things ring true in most, if not all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cited restraint issues, impairment from alcohol, drugs or fatigue and distractions and speed. <\/p>\n
Road and weather conditions also played a part and, as New Zealand heads into winter, Greally rehashed the police\u2019s longstanding advice to slow down, increase braking distance between vehicles and be aware of the environment. <\/p>\n
![\"Steve]()
Steve Greally says crashes over the past week have been \u201cparticularly horrific\u201d for staff. Photo \/ John Borren<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want people to do the right thing, slow down, be patient … for God\u2019s sake, enjoy the journey because we have a beautiful country here.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Greally noted patience on the roads is a virtue many Kiwis still fall short on.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some reason in New Zealand, we want to be at the head of the queue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand it, but it seems to be what a lot of Kiwis do. And we have to stop that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to understand that driving on our roads is inherently dangerous, but it doesn\u2019t have to be if people observe the basic rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Acting Assistant Commissioner Steve Greally, road policing and district support, told the Herald that police view any death…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[19838,74,534,54170,1558,29422,19552,11784,305,78,3375,685,6187,5836,11692,111,43,139,69,90,68253,384,675,20383,2441,25396,686,80],"class_list":["post-404090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-19838","tag-after","tag-amid","tag-april","tag-been","tag-crashes","tag-driver","tag-fatal","tag-have","tag-in","tag-killed","tag-last","tag-lives","tag-lost","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-patience","tag-people","tag-police","tag-roads","tag-spike","tag-urge","tag-week","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}