Tourist killing us on our roads

Urban legend methinks. Or if true, it's because most trips are short.

I thought that we were talking about "tourists killing us on our roads" not distracted mothers. In any event the accidents that you are talking about, although common, seldom cause death.

I recall a highway patrol doing a U turn and killed a motorcyclist. Perhaps the officer involved should not be on our road either.

cool story bro, tell it again to the government you voted for, they are the ones that can make a diff not tmmb. Btw, get off ur computer and do some travelling. No good talking sh1t and being stuck in nz.

Yea, tourist, stop killing us on our roads, we seem to be able to do it all very well ourselves thank you very much!

If you are going to insult someone, at least get the spelling right.

I learnt how to drive on NZ roads and do most of my driving on here. However I have driven on the roads in Hong Kong and China for 2 years and especially in China where it's basically no rules organised chaos on the roads. Some of the worst driving I've ever seen but during that time I've only ever seen a few accidents but minor ones ie fender bender types or bumpers coming off.

However in NZ, I've witnessed close to at least a dozen major accidents with 2 of them being fatal. What is it with the way we're driving here!

You're more likely to have pedestrian accidents involving local drivers here rather than in China. I can't say the same for other parts of China but where I lived (biggest city in South China, Guangzhou), you would hardly see anyone crossing the street outside of the designated crossing areas. Probably because they're not stupid enough to risk getting run over by drivers that don't stop even for red lights half the time.

Then there was the Austrian lady in a campervan two or three years ago who took out no fewer than five motorcycles, all dead, they were part of a charity ride down south, and an American on a Harley Davidson who head-oned a vehicle because he evaded something by swerving to the right, as a driver used to driving on the right would do.He lost a leg from that accident.
The problem for tourists is not driving on the left while they are thinking about it, it's when they forget and revert to their normal driving that they stray to the wrong side here,and if something untoward happens they will instinctively head for the right-hand side with disastrous results.

It's always interesting to see what we choose to notice or remember. China has a higher fatality rate per capita than NZ.

No they don't. Per 100,000 people China 5.1 and NZ 8.6. And poor old Libya 40.5.

That's Wikipedia I suspect. The issue with China is they don't report to a lot of the international bodies, so data tends to be estimated, out of date, or just plain made up. Everything I've seen historically reports China to be higher than us, I'll hunt out a decent source if I get a chance.

Chinese driver good,Kiwi driver no good!

If that's the case then upon what do you derive your theory. An estimate! If you think about it a large portion of people in china don't own a car so "per capita" the death rate will obviously be low. What you should have quoted was the death rate per 100,000 vehicles. But if you had then some fool would argue that the information was from Wikipedia or out dated or understated etc etc etc.

No point getting into a shit fight about sources. The point with China is you just never know. Here's an article that starts to explain the issue:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chinas_police_hugely_underestimate_road_deaths_research_999.html

You're right that per capita death rate is not a great comparison. The generally accepted stance is that per capita, AND per vehicle, AND per kilometer traveled should all be factored in when making comparisons between disparate countries or locales. Disparate could mean because of economy, terrain, vehicle fleet, any number of things. Only when these factors are more or less the same can any single measure start to be useful.

The point I was making was the Chinese road toll can certainly not be used as any measure to say our own driving/toll is not good.

My point was that you put Kyokei "in his place" without any genuine argument based on any facts in support. In fact those "facts" turned out to be incorrect. He was just expressing his view.

I drive through this intersection at least twice a day,six days a week,I still see vehicles drive straight out of the Caves Rd. without stopping,and I had one do a U turn infront of me through the marker posts this week.There is nothing wrong with this junction,as you say,it is the drivers doing dumb things.

Indeed he was, and I simply stated that it is interesting what we, as humans, remember.

He has reached a conclusion about the relative safety of driving in China versus NZ, based on his observations. I find that interesting, given that outside of wikipedia, the evidence is that his conclusion is incorrect.

In saying that, it may well have been true for the area he was in. Who knows! The statisticians sure don't!

Smac - I was expressing my views based on where I lived, in Guangzhou. Not any other parts ie Beijing/Shanghai or the other dozens of big cities. And in no way am I saying their driving is courteous/good/nonaggressive as it's a free-for-all mostly on any road that is not a motorway/highway system (for some reason they actually show a lot better driving behaviours whilst driving at 100kph or more) My views are just that. Mine. Not government or whatever stats you will find out there.

On their inner-city roads, you want to get into a lane! Don't indicate, just shove your car into it and force one of the cars to get out ot the way. No honking involved, just expected over there. Or maybe just mount the footpath and bypass that queue there. Yep all good no problem. The pedestrians just move aside like it was expected. I would even go to say their drivers are more skilled and alert that kiwi drivers. It's just the nature of expecting someone to cut in front of you or some ridiculous bad driving (some would say skillful 'how the hell did he do that' driving) that has lead to a lot of their drivers having pretty good reaction time.
My wife's father made a comment on how my driving was too timid and how I was being bullied on the roads. So he'd often take over and proceeded to blast down heavy traffic roads and get into seemingly impossible spaces between cars like playing car frogger. In another life I swear he could've been a stunt driver but he says this is pretty common there among many people, especially with taxi/delivery/police cars. Yep the cops do that also, saw it more often than I can remember. Cops will only care if there's an accident, not when your feelings are hurt by someone cutting in front of you or displaying of bad driving.

Maybe some of that hard nosed attitude to driving has come over to NZ and causing accidents by driving aggressively on our roads like they do back home! I seem to think so. But then again I see plenty of that in NZ from kiwi drivers already, just not as bad as over there yet. We're heading that way though. The amount of times I see people trying to jump the queue and then slow down heavily on the wrong road blocking one lane and trying to get into the other lane (especially true with the ones that know that section in Wellington where there are 2 lanes and the left lane going up to the motorway heading to hutt/porirua when you have just passed Westpac Stadium near the ferry terminal turnoff)

Bah sorry for the wall of text

I also would like to say that I prefer driving in NZ by far, in China there was always a constant fear of someone shoving their cars into your face before you've even had time to blink. Driving here compared to that is pretty tame. One thing it's taught me however (and that I am thankful for) is it has made me really alert on the roads now and I would even go to say my reaction times would have been sped up if something unexpected happened on the roads. My father-in-law has commented on how lazy a lot of our drivers are in NZ when I recently took a week off to show him around NZ. He said he was surprised there were just accidents waiting to happen and frankly I'd agree. He made a special mention of housewives and their big SUVs on how they drive and they seem to think they're the only ones on the road, apparently they're the same as over in China too. I had a big lol at that.