The group would put ‘‘fresh eyes'' on where, when, and hopefully why, serious crashes happened, Environment Southland senior transport planner Russell Hawkes said.
‘‘It will try and take a new approach to reducing the statistics.''
Southland and Otago already had safety implementation groups made up mainly of transport planners and engineers from councils and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), he said.
The new group had been widened to include others in the community who could influence road safety outcomes, such as representatives from major transport companies like HW Richardson Group and Fonterra.
‘‘Their drivers are on the road all the time. What are they seeing? What are the driver behaviours or engineering issues which have the potential to cause accidents?
‘‘Unsafe passing is a likely factor and it could be as simple as putting in no-passing lines [where they are needed].''
For the past 18 months, the Otago and Southland regional transport committees have been holding joint meetings, although they have not formally merged yet.
The new group had come out of discussions at those meetings, he said.
Mr Hawkes said while the name of the new group was the Southland Road Safety Influencing Group, it would also cover the Queenstown-Lakes and Clutha district areas, ‘‘basically, all of Otago and Southland excluding Dunedin city''.
The membership had been confirmed. The group would meet for the first time next month and about four times a year after that. Recommendations for education and engineering improvements would be reported to the regional transport committees.
Mr Hawkes said Southland experienced a ‘‘bump'' year for fatalities and serious injury road crashes in 2009-10, with 13 fatalities and 93 people injured.
Since then, the number of fatalities had remained steady while the number of people seriously injured was declining slowly.
The total was ‘‘moving in the right direction'', he said.
‘‘Yes, we are on the right track. But we are still not making as much progress as we would like.''
The Otago figures showed more variation, with between 12 and 19 fatalities annually in the six years to the middle of last year and an average of 170 serious injuries.
