The Government has released an independent report which criticises its predecessor for failing to set targets to reduce serious and fatal road accidents.
Photo: RNZ
The report, received by the National government in 2015, was released today by the Minister responsible for road-safety Julie-Anne Genter.
It found that the lack of national targets for reducing crashes was compromising road safety.
Ms Genter said the coalition Government is more ambitious and is investigating introducing a zero road death target.
"Without an actual target for reducing deaths and serious injuries you risk arriving at the absurd conclusion that your strategy is 'on-track' even when you're not seeing any improvement."
Ms Genter said road policing in particular suffered under National.
"We're not even going out and enforcing speed and drink driving to the extent that we did several years ago - and that's probably playing a role in why we're have increasing deaths and serious injuries on our roads," she said.
"So, first place to start is to ensure we have the road safety police on the roads implementing that enforcement."
However, National's transport spokesperson Jami-Lee Ross said the former government put enormous effort and money into road safety.
"We invested $600 million to put in place new road safety measures, we did things like change the driver use of cellphones, we changed the rules around give-ways.
And we also built some of the safest roads in the country with the roads of national significance - where there have been no deaths."
The Transport Minister Phil Twyford said he has been advised that there are $800m in urgent safety improvements needed on local roads, and that those improvements could save 160 lives a year.
