In 2017, 378 people died on New Zealand roads, up from 325 in 2016, 218 in 2015 and 291 in 2014.
2018 was the deadliest year on our roads since 2009, with 380 people killed.
Dylan Thomsen from the AA says 2013 marked the lowest number of road deaths at 253, and since then the number has been climbing steadily.
He told Tim Dower it's hard to pinpoint why that might be.
However, he says in many of the fatal crashes, the drivers had drugs in their system.
"The honest answer is that everybody involved in road safety has done a lot of head scratching on why we are going backwards.
We can easily spend time trying to explain what's going on, when we should be focusing on what we can do to change it. Nobody has a simple answer."
LISTEN ABOVE AS DYLAN THOMSEN SPEAKS TO TIM DOWER
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