Before Luck Runs Out
We prosecute people whose driving leads to crashes because society recognises that driver decisions matter. Yet almost nobody gets behind the wheel intending to crash.
That's what makes road safety so challenging.
Most serious crashes are not caused by people setting out to do harm. They're caused by ordinary people making decisions that become normal.
Looking at a phone for a moment. Taking a gap, they've taken a hundred times before.
Following too closely. Driving after a couple of drinks.
Failing to properly check for a cyclist at an intersection.
And each time nothing goes wrong, the behaviour is reinforced.
The absence of a crash starts to feel like evidence that the behaviour is safe.
But it isn't.
It's often just evidence that they've been lucky.
This is risk normalisation. When repeated exposure to danger without consequences convinces us that the danger isn't really there.
The driver who caused my crash didn't need a court sentence to learn the lesson. He learned it the instant the collision occurred. I suspect he'll be looking for cyclists for the rest of his life.
The tragedy is that the learning came too late.
So perhaps the real challenge for road safety isn't helping people to understand the consequences of a crash. Most people already understand that.
The challenge is helping people recognise risk normalisation before their luck runs out.
Because the absence of a crash doesn't prove a decision was safe. Sometimes it just means today wasn't the day the consequences arrived.
Road safety begins when we stop confusing luck with skill.
This is Peter Dally's message to drivers. It follows his own journey of recovery and a career that's seen him witness firsthand the consequence of road trauma.
Peter recently completed the restorative Te Pae Oranga Iwi Community Panel and speaks with New Zealand Vulnerable Road User Trust chair Julia McLean about why he wanted the driver to be dealt with outside of the Criminal Court system.
