The Government's own studies show that median barriers on roads, like this one between Pukerua Bay and Paekākāriki, north of Porirua, are highly effective at stopping head-on collisions.

OPINION: For as long as there have been cars, there have been accidents, and policemen asking drivers to slow down.

Alas, it didn't work, and the road toll continued to climb until 1987, then began to drop.

What changed in 1987? First, the stockmarket crashed. For those who don't know it, the road toll rises in economic booms and drops in economic busts.

CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF There's a lot more traffic on the road these days.

Second, in the late 1980s, changes in technology began to affect the road toll.

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The police began to get serious about enforcing seatbelt use in the fronts of cars.

The government announced that Auckland motorways would get median barriers to prevent head-on collisions.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF American National Safety Council estimates 26 per cent of all traffic crashes involve drivers using cellphones.

In 1989, seatbelts became compulsory for back-seat passengers as well.

The effects of the median barriers were spectacular; on the Auckland Harbour Bridge, serious accidents dropped from one a week to almost zero. There was no change in driver behaviour, but a spectacular change in the result.

The current road toll may seem high, but it's less than half of what it was in 1987, even though there are many more cars on the road.

CHRISTEL YARDLEY/STUFF Truck crashes account for 20 per cent of the road toll (file photo).

Police, who often have to deal with the consequences of high-speed collisions, have developed something of an obsession with lowering the road toll by targeting speed.

However, quite clearly, this hasn't worked. That's because the police campaign was aimed at the average driver, but the average driver was never really the problem.

Here's the facts: about 80 per cent of the road toll occurs below, not above, the speed limit. Of the 20 per cent of accidents that occur above the speed limit, almost all are caused by either yobbos, impaired drivers or outlaw motorcyclists.

KIWIRAIL Rail is more efficient and safter for long-haul friend, and would take trucks off the road (file photo).

A 2009 AA analysis of fatal accidents stated: "Government advertising suggests you should be grateful to receive a speeding ticket because it will save your life. In fact, exceeding speed limits aren't a major issue. Police surveying has found that even the top 15 per cent of open-road speeders average under the 110kmh ticketing threshold."

The government and the police deliberately misrepresent reality by defining speeding as "driving too fast for the conditions". So, any accident where someone loses control is defined almost automatically as a speeding accident, even though the driver may have been driving cautiously and be well below the speed limit.

And it's rare to see a police accident analysis that includes issues such as a lack of median barriers. So, if a driver loses attention and drifts into the path of an oncoming vehicle, police blame the lack of attention, not the lack of a median barrier.

This is a dishonest approach. Often accidents begin with driver error, but whether or not they end in tragedy, mostly depends on the car you're driving and the road you're driving down.

And while police obsess over speeding, they barely enforce other road rules. For example, the American National Safety Council estimates 26 per cent of all traffic crashes involve drivers using cellphones.

Yet, police barely enforce the law banning the use of handheld cellphones in cars. Contrast this with the rigid police 5kmh enforcement of the speed limits. It simply doesn't make sense.

Boy-racers are another easy target for police and politicians, who routinely ignore other major road safety issues.

The simple facts are: in their worst year (2007), boy-racers were responsible for nine deaths, and 91 injuries. By comparison, in 2014, senior road users (75 years and over) accounted for 32 deaths and 478 injuries.

Twenty per cent of the road toll involves trucks. According to the government's own studies, many of these trucks don't need to be driving our main roads. That is: rail and coastal shipping are both vastly more efficient and vastly safer for carrying long-haul freight.

Trucks are there because the Government's transport policy has been effectively hijacked by the trucking industry. That's why the Government of the last nine years has been so quick to build new truck-friendly roads and so slow to fund rail.

Two of the worst accidents in the last week involved vehicles colliding head-on. The Government's own studies show that median barriers on roads are highly effective at stopping this type of collision, yet the majority of New Zealand roads allow cars to collide without warning.

Intersections are another major cause of road deaths. Roundabouts are highly effective at stopping collisions, but they are rarely installed on our highways, mainly because the trucking industry hates them.

Many of New Zealand's roads are like a staircase without a handrail: you make a mistake, you're going to get hurt. Upgrading these deadly roads should be the single highest priority in lowering the road toll.

Clive Matthew-Wilson edits the car review website dogandlemon.com