Road toll

For information regarding pay-per-use roading, see Toll road.

Road toll is the term used in some countries for the number of deaths caused annually by road accidents. The term is in common and official use in Australia and New Zealand.

New Zealand

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New Zealand reports an annual nationwide road toll, plus special period figures for a number of holiday periods:

Christmas - New Year : between 4pm on 24th December and 8am on 3rd January (4th January if January 1 or 2 falls on a weekend).
Easter - from 4pm on the day before Good Friday and 8am the following Tuesday.
Queen's Birthday - from 4pm on the Friday before the first Monday in June to 8am the following Tuesday.
Labour Weekend - from 4pm on the Friday before the last Monday in October to 8am the following Tuesday.

The road toll includes deaths which occur within 7 days of a road accident as a result of injuries received in the accident. Deaths of pedestrians and cyclists are included, but deaths from vehicular accidents not on legal roads (e.g. on farms) are excluded.

The New Zealand road toll has had a generally downward trend in the fifteen years. This has been attributed to a number of factors:

A reduction in drink driving, due to public education and strict policing.
A reduction in average driving speed, due to public education and strict policing
Improvements in vehicle safety.
An increase in the wearing of seat belts due to public education
Hazard mitigation works on dangerous stretches of road.

The road toll for 2005 was 404, the lowest figure for more than 40 years.

It has become a tradition to mark the sites of fatal accidents on highways and rural roads with small white wooden crosses. There has been public debate over this as Land Transport New Zealand is considering removing the crosses on some roads, claiming that they constitute a hazard via distraction. Others claim that they remind drivers to take care.

Australia

In Australia the road toll is reported at a state level.

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