Better Roads in New Zealand

Our mission is to create a safer driving environment through driver education and improved infrastructure.

Keep it 100 and
Maintain Our Roads

Better Roads in New Zealand (BRINZ) is dedicated to improving the safety and quality of roads and highways across New Zealand.

As part of reducing road fatalities, the government has adopted the "Road to Zero" campaign, reducing speed limits throughout the country. We believe these blanket speed reductions do not address the major issues responsible for road fatalities and incidents.

Driver education and basic motor vehicle handling skills are sorely lacking in this country. Distracted or intoxicated drivers are an issue, too. Another major problem is our infrastructure - In many cases the roads themselves are ridden with deep potholes or left in a severe state of disrepair.

Speed has always been the government's focus when it comes to road safety, and The Road to Zero campaign is no exception. How can this cause be taken seriously when there is no effort to improve other critical aspects to road safety?

How can we create safer roads?

Driver Training & Education

We believe there's a deficit in understanding how a vehicle handles and responds to the driver. This creates unconfident drivers who don't drive to the conditions and, in many cases, drive slower than the speed limit, aggravating and endangering other road users.

Add focus to motor vehicle handling skills for new and current drivers, incorporate this into our driver licensing system.

Sober and Focussed

In crashes involving speed, a large portion of drivers at fault were also under the influence of drugs or alcohol, meaning they are in no capacity to be driving in the first place.

We need a system that prevents intoxicated drivers from entering the drivers seat and stricter measures in place for those who breach the law.

Infrastructure Improvements

$2.9 billion dollars has been invested into the Road to Zero campaign, with massive speedbumps and speed limit reductions being two major components to road changes and $197m of that going towards promoting the Road to Zero campaign.

Spending our money in this way completely wastes an opportunity to reduce the stress drivers have on our roads. We advocate an uptick in road maintenance and repairs, an increase in passing lanes; slow vehicle bays and signage encouraging slow drivers to let traffic pass them when safe.

Blanket speed reductions serve only to "make accidents safer" when they happen. Improved infrastructure will reduce tailgating and the number of aggressive drivers on our roads, alleviate the congestion that causes it and encourage safer driving habits.

A bit about BRINZ

Geoff Upson
Your Road Safety Campaigner

Geoff Upson has been on the quest for safer roads since 2018. If you have heard of him before, it may be from his adventures painting 'shapes' around potholes to highlight road damage that had gone months, sometimes years without any remedy. Or perhaps more recently his Road Safety Ducks, helping motorists to avoid the deep potholes that plague our roads.