New Zealand Prepares To Drop The Right-Hand Turn Rule

This rule made driving in New Zealand interesting, because you never knew what was going to happen if foreigners were at the wheel and pedestrians were in the crosswalk. So now, New Zealand will be safer, if a little more boring:

The days of rental car companies giving pamphlets to confused overseas visitors and crossing their fingers that they will cope with New Zealand's oddball right-hand rule look set to be over.

The right-hand rule, a relic of an old Melbourne tram system and cause of 2560 crashes a year, has been marked to be reversed by Transport Minister Steven Joyce.

...New Zealand is the only country in the world to have the right hand rule, where a car making a big turn to the right across oncoming traffic goes before an oncoming car making a little turn to its left into the same road.

At uncontrolled T-intersections with two cars wishing to turn right, traffic on the driver's right get priority.

It means drivers have to check in three different directions, opposite and behind them, and also on the road they are entering.

...The Automobile Association also said it supported the change. There was evidence that the give-way rules were a factor in the 2560 intersection crashes, and one or two deaths, each year, it said.

It is estimated changing the rules to align with other countries would reduce intersection crashes by 7 per cent and the social cost by about $17 million a year.

It would improve pedestrian safety at intersections, where there has been an 88 per cent increase since 2000 in pedestrians being hit, many of them hit by a turning vehicle.

The rule was introduced in 1977 shadowing changes in Victoria, Australia, which made the rule to help trams on Melbourne's streets, according to the Automobile Association.

But Victoria changed back in 1993 and experienced a decline in intersection crashes, leaving New Zealand on its own.