What We Do
South Canterbury Road Safety (SCRS) works across the Timaru, Waimate and Mackenzie Districts to promote road safety. Our aim is to reduce incidents of road trauma, and fatal and serious crashes throughout South Canterbury. We run events and education programmes to target identified road safety issues in our area.
Community involvement is essential to achieve our road safety targets. We work closely with other road safety partners, like Police, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, Hate Hone St John, Kaitiaki o Ara - Students Against Dangerous Driving, South Canterbury Neighbourhood Support, NZTA, ACC, Automobile Association and many others to achieve this goal. We also work collaboratively with our colleagues at Waitaki Road Safety and Ashburton District Council to share resources and ideas.
Lucy Mehrtens
South Canterbury is home to Lucy who grew up in Waimate attending the local primary and secondary school before venturing to the University of Canterbury where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Media and Communications. Returning to South Canterbury Lucy worked for local Cancer Society branch and before spending eight years in the local media industry. Lucy's passion for road safety sparked from being a SADD leader at Waimate High School. A serious crash in 2016 prompted her to work alongside local emergency services to work with the community in particular local schools with road safety education.
Michelle Bunt
Michelle was born in Timaru and has a Bachelor of Social Services in Counselling. After many years working in community engagement, Michelle joined road safety in February 2024 after seeing the impacts of serious road crashes on friends who live with ongoing disabilities and brain injuries. Michelle has a particular passion and interest in working with international drivers, motorcyclists and seniors. She frequently delivers community talks and presentations on behaviour change and road safety topics.
New Zealand's Road Safety Problem
New Zealand’s road safety performance is poor compared to similar countries. New Zealand's road fatality rate is higher than the average for OECD countries
at 7.33 deaths per 100,000 population, while the OECD median is 4.28.
The graphics below show how New Zealand compares to other nations:
Road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants
