road crashes involving tourists result in renewed calls for foreign driver tests

In NZ news over the weekend, two 12-year-old girls and a woman died after a Dutch tourist allegedly drove through a stop sign at Rakaia on Saturday night.  Stuff story.

Driving safety campaigner Clive Mathew Wilson says the problem should be addressed. "If a person is not capable of driving on our roads safely they should not be behind the wheel of a car," says Mr Wilson.

You would think that those who go to another country would first check out road laws to see what differences there are to what they have at home - and there are plenty of websites on these. Of course, practical orientation, particularly when you need to drive on the other side of the road, requires a lot of concentration for the first day at least, but it's hard to see how anyone could mistake a Stop sign for meaning anything other than "stop, not just slow down, and other traffic has priority."