This paper describes the method by which we compared the road safety enforcement regimes in New Zealand and the Australian State of Victoria. Our aim was to use Victorian experience as a guide to the appropriate level of road safety expenditure in New Zealand. Why Victoria? Because Victoria and New Zealand have similar populations, standards of living and cultural backgrounds, but Victoria has significantly safer roads and has improved its safety record greatly over the past two decades. For these reasons, Victoria has served as a model for New Zealand in the past, and continues to do so. The paper begins by placing road safety enforcement in context with other road safety interventions. It then elaborates the method by which we compared New Zealand and Victoria so that the comparison would be fair and meaningful. Next, it describes how we modelled the assignment of enforcement resources to the road network, this being central to our method of comparison. Lastly, it draws some conclusions about the usefulness of the method. The paper does not present results at this stage as this work is still in progress. (A)
Abstract