Why is Chris Bishop Sending People Speeding into a Death Trap?

“It’s a death trap” said National Party Campaign Committee Chair and Transport Minister Chris Bishop, on September 23, 2025. 

He was referring to the state highway between Ōtaki and Levin where there had been 13 fatalities and 23 serious injuries between 1 January 2015 and 22 December 2022.

He was explaining the dangers of the road to justify why the National Party led Government was spending billions for more motorways, and in particular a new motorway for this stretch. He calls them roads of national significance.

I prefer to call them roads of National Party significance because they were hand picked by National Party ministers without going through the normal process of deciding how best to spend billions of dollars of public money. They were chosen for political reasons.

But, regardless, maybe he had a point here. Many people have died on this stretch of road. I’ve driven it many times and I hated it at 100kmh. Being caught in hours of delays after fatal road crashes was not something I wanted to experience again.

And that’s why I was pleased when the previous government reduced the speed to 80 kmh at the end of 2022. 

From Dec 23, 2022 to June 8, 2025 the speed on the most dangerous sections of the road was reduced to 80kmh. And over this period there were zero deaths and three serious injuries. If the road had still been at 100 kmh, based on the earlier averages, there would have been about four dead people and seven seriously injured. 

But here’s where it gets insane.

Chris Bishop’s National Party Government increased the speed back to 100kmh from June 9, 2025. This was in spite of overwhelming community opposition.

And in the few months since they increased the speed, already someone has been killed on the road.

So the Government decided to increase the speed on a road which was so dangerous that the Minister of Transport called it a ‘death trap’, and quickly afterwards someone died.

Then Bishop had the cynicism to claim he was building a new motorway for safety reasons – surely if safety was his central concern he would ensure that the speed on the existing road was set at 80kmh?

Doubling down on cynicism, Bishop claimed, in response to my Official Information Act request, that his hands were tied as the decision to revert to 100kmh was mandated by the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2024. 

However what he conveniently failed to mention is that this Rule was put in place by his Government, and could be changed by his Government. The Government had directed NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) to not consider road safety when deciding whether to increase the speed on roads like this one. Officials stated that this “is highly unusual … safety or technical guidance, are normally weighted alongside consultation feedback to determine the outcome of a speed review.” It was Bishop’s choice, and his Government’s choice, not to keep the speed at a safe level.

The Roads of National Significance will increase climate emissions and vehicle dependency and don’t have strong business cases. They are funded by taking money away from alternatives like road maintenance, public transport, safer cycling, safer walking and road safety in general.

Bishop tried to negate the road safety argument by claiming that his new Road of National Significance was driven by a concern about road safety, but he was hoist on his own petard. If Bishop cared about road safety he would reduce the 100 kmh speed limit which is killing people, but he has not.

He cares a lot about Roads of National Party Significance.

Data from NZTA: