SAFE PASSAGE FOR VISITORS

Neil Bennett Road Asset Manager, Fulton Hogan Christchurch,

Abstract

Tourism is vitally important to New Zealand’s economy and in the year ended March 2014 over 2.7M visitors arrived in our country. Increasing numbers of tourists are electing to have “self-drive” holidays.

In Southland there is a popular tourist route known as the Southern Scenic route, that has an unsealed loop off the sealed road that accesses the popular tourist attractions of Curio Bay and Slope Point (the southernmost point in New Zealand).

This paper explains the novel use of a cell phone application, originally developed in Sweden to survey roughness, to accurately monitor driver performance, identify out of context curves particularly from the perspective of a driver who has never seen the road before and often never driven on unsealed roads.

The tourists are followed by a survey vehicle through the unsealed road section, photographed every second while driving and the phone data is analysed to enable monitoring of road condition trends at different times of the year. A seal extension would reduce the problem but as a standalone project this has been unable to gain NZ Transport Agency subsidy and so was unaffordable for Council at this time. Unsealed road maintenance strategies are therefore necessary to ensure the safety of our visitors.

Key Words

Unsealed, Tourist, Gravel, Accident, Crash, Overseas, Self-drive

Introduction centres on seeing as much of that landscape as possible in the time available. In most cases In mid-2013 Southland District Council came tourists pre-plan a geographical outline of their under significant pressure from locals about trip, including if they want to see both islands, the condition of the unsealed roads in a what the ‘North Island – ’ split will popular diversion off the Southern Scenic be, and some specific tourist destinations, Route through . The maintenance before leaving their home countries. Most contractor delivering via the Foveaux Alliance tourists had planned some of their route in contract managed to make improvements to advance and have rough itineraries. the road to improve the condition of the worst sections of the road prior to the peak tourist After the major destinations are ‘locked in’ season in 2013-14. there is then flexibility to include local attractions and points of interest identified by Accidents continued to occur on the road and tourist brochures and word of mouth. Flexibility an increasing public focus on overseas drivers is often built in depending on factors such as came to a head in the summer of 2014-2015. time and the weather. As the maintenance contractor in the alliance, Fulton Hogan investigated if any tool could be Tourism is promoted nationally – promoting used to assist Council make a business case New Zealand as the destination and regionally to have this road sealed. There would be very – promoting the attractions within a region. In few unsealed roads with such a high accident Southland, Venture Southland is the agency reporting rate as Southland District had been responsible and the website proactive in issuing “crash cards” to local www.southlandnz.com is one marketing tool. farmers and tow companies to ensure that as The Southern Scenic route features on the many accidents as possible were recorded in front page and it provides a link to the New Zealand Transport Agency Crash www.southernscenicroute.co.nz which is a Analysis System (CAS) database. The standalone website promoting the attractions database can separately report accidents through three separate regions and tourist reported to the Police and the ‘non-reported’ agencies. This quote is from the webpage. accidents. “This journey between Queenstown and Nationally, a focus was placed on overseas is approximately 610 kilometres (km) drivers following a spate of high profile of natural and cultural attractions laid out one accidents. The statistics show the problem is after the other – wildlife viewing, short walks, over represented in the south. Many public mountain-biking, fishing, hunting, boating, commentators are calling for more strenuous camping, tramping and caving – making it an checks on overseas drivers before being ideal drive for those with time to explore”. allowed to rent vehicles. This is particularly relevant as self-drive touring is becoming increasingly popular.

Fulton Hogan has been at the leading edge of the use of the Swedish phone application Roadroid to monitor pavement roughness and the information available also includes speed and position. It therefore may be able to be used in order to try and identify “out of context” curves and conditions that tourists found particularly challenging. This paper explains that process and the findings.

Tourism Important to New Zealand

The key tourist attraction in New Zealand is the Figure 1: Extract from Tourism Brochure landscape, and tourists’ planning of holidays In addition to the 62 reported accidents there It is with this marketing that the Catlins were a further 51 accidents stored in the CAS becomes a ‘must see’ destination for visitors database with the information being collected to New Zealand. on the Council crash cards (shown as unreported in Fig. 2). 21 of the 62 accidents High Accident Rate were identified as being foreign drivers and recent media publicity indicates that Southland Under-reporting of rural road accidents is the has a high percentage of foreign driver norm in New Zealand with local farmers often accidents. towing crash victims out of the fences and the Police and Local Authorities never hearing The most revealing information comes from about the accident. Southland District issued the verbatim comments in the CAS crash crash reporting cards to residents in 2009 and reports. These include: this caused a sudden spike in ‘un-reported’ accidents which were stored in the CAS “has remained on right-hand side as he is used database. The high reporting rates have tailed to driving in Belgium” off but the Council has been very proactive with other safety measures discussed later in “lost control in gravel and ended up off road on the paper. opposite side”

Analysis of the Southern Scenic Road “rear slipped out on loose gravel – driver tried unsealed section from Fortrose to Curio Bay to correct with accelerator – after 3rd fish tail (Figure 2) identified 62 reported accidents slid off road into ditch” over 14 years with 75% of those crashes recorded as “Bend – Lost Control/Head On”. “X travelling towards Curio Bay cut corner and ran into Y who was travelling towards Tokanui”

Southern Scenic “Van came through cutting on top of hill. Hit by wind as exited and pushed left into deep Unsealed Accidents gravel, overcorrected and rolled over”

2014 2 5 Southland District Council Actions 2013 5 10 5 No local authority wants the adverse publicity 2012 3 5 2011 2 4 that arises from a road with a high accident 4 rate which potentially puts off tourists from 2010 4 0 visiting the region with the potential loss to 19 2009 3 6 tourism based businesses. 3 2008 2 5 2007 1 Council is under considerable pressure and 3 2006 7 this quote from the Council website explains 2 the situation. 2005 8 7 2004 3 “Southland District is facing some hard 2003 21 decisions about the future of parts of its 2002 roading network because of funding 21 2001 2 constraints. Government funding is being 5 tightened and Council is only too aware of the 2000 3 financial burden some of the district's 0 5 10 15 20 ratepayers are under. Council has worked hard in the past few years to come up with Unreported Foreign Driver Accidents innovative ways of saving money and is

continually trying to do more with less, a Figure 2 – Accidents on Southern Scenic network plan looking at the economics, social benefits and safety of our roads has been ruts and corrugations which people had to created.” navigate to reach popular tourist spots such as Slope Point. Accident Reporting Cards Vehicles frequently drove on the wrong side of Council established the crash reporting card the road to avoid the worst areas Mr Stronach system to increase the accident reporting to said. assist with the economic justification for future improvements. "A lot times there's been vehicles come off the road and farmers have to pull them back on . . Advisory Signs . trucks and campervans get stuck going up Council has installed signage warning drivers hills." of the high crash rate and reminders to stay left on the roads. Most of these accidents were small and went unreported therefore the council was unaware of the scale of the issue, he said. But it shouldn't take a fatal accident to get noticed.

Foveaux Alliance Response

An alliance maintenance contract is managed by a team representing both Council and the contractor where decisions are made by an Alliance Management Team (AMT).

To find funds to do improvements on the Southern Scenic road, cuts had to be made elsewhere and there was pressure on the overall budget. Prior to the end of December

2013 the AMT identified five sites to trial Figure 3 – Large warning sign various maintenance metalling strategies to

see if they could be strategies to be applied to Temporary Speed Restrictions other road sections. Over the peak tourist season Council imposes a 50km/h speed limit on the unsealed section. The construction work completed on parts of

the Coastal route lasted through the Christmas Targeted Maintenance break (4 weeks) before any intervention was Enhanced maintenance metalling strategies at required. The grader, a construction roller and known trouble spots. water-cart were used in an attempt to prolong

the surface life of areas which corrugated soon Public Pressure after grading.

Media coverage has prompted some of the Monitoring Improvement Projects actions listed above. The local newspaper

(SOUTHLAND-TIMES, 2013) headline: This situation and unsealed road improvement “Postie slams Catlins’ roads” containing projects for other authorities led to an Internet quotes from rural mail deliverer (postie is a kiwi search for tools able to be simply used to colloquialism) Syd Stronach including: assist with the performance monitoring of the

various projects. "It's a tourist road, yet we are expecting them to drive on (conditions like) ball bearings or Roadroid, a cell phone application developed marbles. It's not on," he said. "Imagine coming in Sweden, was being analysed by students at here from New York or China or Japan?" Auckland University. The output from analysis

of the phones motion sensors was an Because of increased use, the road's condition estimated International Roughness Index (IRI) had deteriorated quickly, he said, leaving deep score. While originally designed for sealed road networks, Fulton Hogan was keen to trial it on unsealed road networks where there are This is not a very high volume road and at few options for roughness measurement. times there were long waits for a vehicle to follow through the road. Fulton Hogan’s testing has involved monitoring 12 sites in Ashburton District where Vehicle Setup both clay and lime rock blends have been The two components needed for the survey constructed on roads carrying dairy tankers were mounted in the survey vehicle – a and on one road providing access to a Contour HD camera taking photos every Limestone quarry. second and the Roadroid app monitoring the speed, altitude, position and roughness. These sites have been monitored for up to eight months now and have had no maintenance intervention in that time. As the results have been positive other maintenance contract areas are now adopting the Roadroid software as part of their maintenance strategies.

Roadroid produces results with the following information available: . Date and Time Stamp . GPS position . Speed . Altitude

. Roughness Figure 4: Setup in survey vehicle It was the idea of utilising the Position and Speed data that lead to a trial on the Southern Eventful First Survey Scenic route documented in this paper. The first survey run testing the equipment was very eventful as nearing the end of the survey Road Safety Survey the van being followed and the author (driving the survey vehicle) were the first on the scene This use for the Roadroid cell phone app was of an accident involving a camper van that had not something that the developer had slid off the road. envisaged when he took the app to the market but the information available would be very useful to studying the impact of road condition on tourist drivers.

The original data collection method was to put the cell phone in the tourist vehicle but that intervention may have changed their behaviour. It was decided instead to “stalk” the tourist by following close behind them in another vehicle fitted with a camera recording their position on the road and Roadroid monitoring roughness, speed and location. The difficulty with this methodology on a very dusty road is poor visibility.

Some of the worst drivers did not want to be Figure 5: Accident scene followed closely and they stopped at the first opportunity meaning that survey run was wasted. Due to the remote location the survey was having difficulties even though the road had aborted so we could help the young couple out been graded two days prior to the survey. as the weather was worsening and they had a child and a young baby in the van. A farmer This is not unusual as the grader does loosen did respond and try to tow them out but the surface and until vehicles flick the stones decided not to as he felt the van would fall on off the road the surface can be rougher than a its side if he attempted the rescue. week or two after grading.

The family from Dunedin (three hours north) The Roadroid cloud based software plots were taken to a nearby backpackers to await roughness on a map and the black and red a salvage vehicle from . dots are worse than yellow and green. The heavy black section on the short climb in The accident happened with the van keeping Figure 8 is the area investigated. too far left on a 45km/h curve and they slid on the loose metal travelling quite slowly with a relatively high crossfall and were trapped in the deep drain on the side of the road.

Survey Location Two sections of road on the unsealed section of the Southern Scenic were surveyed. Slope Point Road from the start to School Road and Haldane Curio Bay Road from Slope Point Road to Curio Bay.

Figure 8: Steep section 3km from Curio Bay

The van shown in Figures 9 and 10 lost control on the short steep section but recovered Figure 7: Locality Plan quickly as shown by the photo taken one second after the first. Base Speed Survey Both roads were travelled in both directions as fast as was safe to do so in the survey vehicle for a driver unfamiliar with the road. This has been saved as the base speed and the vehicles followed have been plotted against this speed.

Survey Results

The survey technique works very well with useful information being gained from the surveys. Surveys were completed in both directions over the full survey length but an extra focus was placed on a short steep section of 500m where drivers appeared to be Figure 9: Van losing control Those sealed sections are near the end of their lives but having achieved the desired five year life they have still been a cost effective maintenance treatment.

Vehicles observed on Slope Point Rd as part of this survey tended to accelerate once they reached the short sealed sections.

An alternative treatment could be a blended metal that could enable the road to hold its shape better in a very dry season and this has been demonstrated on the Ashburton Council maintenance contract. Figure 10: Van recovers quickly but travels wider around the bend These options will be discussed with the Foveaux Alliance AMT before the next The speed change of different vehicles in the summer holiday period. loose gravel of different vehicles can be seen in the 500m trial section shown in Figure 11. Driver Behaviour

The media coverage of the tourist driver issue has led to a significant increase in calls to the NZ Police *555 number.

Head of road policing for the NZ Police, Assistant Commissioner Dave Cliff was quoted on the Stuff website (STUFF, 2015) on 9 January: "Calls to *555 demonstrates that the public will not tolerate the small Figure 11: Peak Roughness and Traffic proportion of drivers who present a risk to Speed themselves and other road users, and they are willing to support police efforts to stop those At distance 100 to 160m the peak roughness drivers." – shown as the thick black line corresponds with the sudden slowing of speed as vehicles The New Zealand Transport Agency and the lost traction. NZ Rental Vehicle Association have begun a trial in the South Island of steering wheel tags Alternative Solutions and information cards aimed at educating A similar problem was occurring on Slope overseas drivers as they get behind the wheel. Point Road in 2009 when two high A number of tourism and transport safety maintenance sections were given a dust agencies were involved as part of the Visiting suppression treatment (an Otta seal). Despite Drivers Signature Road Safety Project. it not being the most suitable treatment for a high stress site the two sections have held up Driving with the camera in the car shows both very well. where drivers have difficulty with the road conditions as shown previously but given the few surveys actually completed in this survey trial there has been some scary behaviour witnessed.

The black car in Figure 13 is overtaking on a bend with no visibility around the corner.

Figure 15: Tourist taking photos.

Failing to keep left on the crest of summit vertical curves increases the risk of collision if the vehicle travelling in the opposite direction is doing the same thing. Sun-strike and dust Figure 13: Car overtaking on bend contribute to the risk. Figure 16 shows how narrow the road is when large vehicles pass Camper Vans really struggle on the narrow each other. During one survey, 8 vehicles roads. Figure 14 shows two vans in convoy were passed in the 5km long and 8 minute taking more than their share of the road on one survey. This indicates the exposure to of the Otta seal sections on Slope Point Road. oncoming vehicles is higher than indicated by the average traffic volumes stored in the inventory system RAMM.

Figure 14: Wide camper vans on narrow road Figure 16: Summit vertical curve on Slope One tourist was observed stopped in the traffic Point Road lane to allow their passenger to walk up to take a photo of the scenery. Figure 15 shows the Refinements for future surveys scene surveyed from the opposite direction but just around the bend there were three cars There were some minor issues with the data that would have been forced to take evasive collection methodology and dust was the main action. issue making it dangerous to follow too closely and while also obscuring some of the photos. The method will work best with damp road conditions.

Conclusions Author Biography

This research was a proof of concept to see if Neil Bennett the novel use of a phone app called Roadroid Road Asset Manager – Fulton Hogan could be used to investigate driver behaviour at the same time that road condition and speed were measured.

It was very successful and when used in conjunction with a camera, a lot of information can be extracted out of each survey. Survey results indicated that poor road conditions had a measurable effect on driver speed. Corrugations on a steep grade led to sudden slowing of speed as the vehicle started to lose Fulton Hogan Ltd control. Loose gravel had a similar impact on P O Box 39185 drivers as they did start to slide at times. Christchurch 8545 New Zealand Council has undertaken a range of short-term Email: [email protected] cost effective temporary solutions including improved warning signs, temporary speed Neil’s principal responsibility is to support limits over summer and enhanced Fulton Hogan’s local authority contracts maintenance strategies. throughout New Zealand. He is passionate about low volume roads and has been on the The ultimate solution to reduce accident rates committee of the organising committee of the is to widen and seal the road. With the biennial low volume roads workshops held in evidence of this paper and further detailed New Zealand for 12 years. The aim of these research, it may be possible to justify some workshops and Neil’s work role is information interim improvements such as traction seals sharing and determining best practice. on short lengths to make the trouble spots safer for visitors. Despite his grey hair he stays aware of the benefits of technology and as an expert user of the google search engine he has brought to References New Zealand technologies like the Ground Penetrating Radar to determine unsealed road SOUTHLAND-TIMES. (2013, April 12). Postie slams metal depth and the cell phone app Roadroid that has been used in this paper as well as Catlins' roads. Retrieved from Stuff.co.nz: several examples of using the app for the http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland- purpose for which it was designed. times/news/8538491/Postie-slams- Catlins-roads

STUFF. (2015, January 9). More people dob in bad drivers. Retrieved from Stuff.co.nz: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/647916 93/More-people-dob-in-bad-drivers