Two roads in the Otago region are classified as high risk by the New Zealand Transport Agency.
State Highway 6 between Wanaka and Haast, and State Highway 87 between Mosgiel and Kyeburn were identified by the agency from crash data collected from 2007-11 as having high personal risk.
In a different category, collective risk, State Highway 1 between Dunedin and Milton was defined as having medium-high risk.
Personal risk was defined as a measure of the risk to each individual using the state highway, taking into account the traffic volumes on each section of state highway, and calculating the annual average fatal and serious injury crashes per 100 million vehicle-kilometres.
Collective risk was defined as a measure of the total number of fatal and serious injury crashes per kilometre over a section of road. Because collective risk was measured in terms of the number of crashes per kilometre of state highway, it was generally expected that those with higher traffic volumes would have a higher collective risk.
KiwiRAP, a New Zealand road assessment programme, a partnership between the NZTA and relevant parties such as the Automobile Association, found that in the periods 2002-06 and 2007-11, state highways in the high and medium-high risk bands decreased by 58%, while the percentage of those classified medium, low-medium, and low increased.
The percentage of road in all collective risk brackets decreased except for the low-risk category.
Outside the Otago region, State Highway 94 between Manapouri and Milford Sound was classed as having high personal risk, and SH93, from Clinton to Mataura, as having medium-high risk.
