AA road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen said that the longer-term picture showed that tragic incidents continued to cast a severe shadow over the country's roads.
"Any year where the road toll is lower than the previous one is positive, but we are still tracking at nearly a death every day.
"This is still well above the number of road deaths there were a decade ago."
In 2013, there were only 253 road deaths, compared to recent years where numbers have consistently been in the 300's.
The number of road deaths in recent years has not reflected the government's Road to Zero aspirations of reducing deaths and serious injuries by 40 percent from 2018 levels by 2030, said Thomsen.
"This year will be the halfway point of the Road To Zero strategy and it has struggled to make much progress so far.
"New Zealand can and should be doing better. If we had the same per capita rate of road deaths as in Australia there would have been less than 250 people killed in New Zealand this year."
Thomsen said some key actions to make roads safer were consistent high-levels of testing for drunk driving, introducing roadside drug testing, more use of alcohol interlocks in vehicles of high-risk drunk drivers and upgrades and improvements to highways.
He said an increased breath alcohol testing campaign by police last year saw more than 2.6 million tests were carried out in the 2022/23 period.
That eclipsed the 1.6 million total for the previous annual period.
"That was hugely encouraging - the police have a target of 3 million tests a year, and we're hopeful this is the start of an upward trend that will see them hitting that mark every year.
"Breath testing has an important role to play in road safety - a high police presence is a strong deterrent for would-be drunk drivers and a safety net there to catch those who have had too much to drink."
A study recently published by the AA Research Foundation, The Safety Benefits of New Roads, analysed and compared crash numbers of old and new roads at seven locations where new highways were built.
It showed on average there was a 37 percent drop in deaths and serious injuries on both the new and old roads compared to when there was a single route.
"This research shows the value in new or upgraded roads which have that have been designed for modern traffic conditions and have features such as safety barriers," said Thomsen.
"They have a real impact on the outcomes of crashes."
Police said that crashes continued to be a leading cause of death and the current holiday road deaths was currently 15 with two days still remaining.
They said the country had already equalled last year's number of deaths in the same holiday season.
