Four provincial rugby teams have run out in jerseys with a strip across the front that looks like a seatbelt, in a road safety push aimed at the men least likely to buckle up. RNZ reported that the Manawatū Turbos, Taranaki Bulls, Northland Taniwha and Waikato wore the special jerseys in NPC matches over the past week, as part of an NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) campaign built around a simple question, “Who do you wear it for?”
The numbers behind it are grim. Since 2020, 33 percent of the drivers and passengers who died in vehicle crashes in New Zealand were not wearing a seatbelt, which RNZ put at 500 lives lost. RNZ reported that young men are over-represented in crashes that kill or seriously injure people, with one in seven not wearing a seatbelt, according to NZTA’s Crash Analysis System.
NZTA head of driving regulation Chris Rodley told RNZ, “It is a sad, yet avoidable reality that men between the ages of 15-39 are dying or getting seriously injured in crashes because they’re not wearing a seatbelt, especially in regional New Zealand.”
He said there were many reasons young men did not buckle up, including seeing it as a hassle on a short drive. Yet half of all injury crashes happen within 7km of home, RNZ reported. “Wearing a seatbelt is one of the easiest and most effective ways to protect yourself from injury in a crash,” Rodley said. He said wearing one cut the risk of dying or being seriously hurt by 40 percent.
The campaign uses rugby because the people it is trying to reach are already in the clubrooms and in the stands. Paul Thompson of the Otago Rugby Football Union told RNZ the game offered a way to reach the men who most need the message.
“This campaign gives us a way into this conversation because this age group are the men in our teams, our clubs and in our stands, and the statistics tell us they are among those least likely to buckle up,” he said.
Thompson said the slogan reflected how not wearing a seatbelt did not only affect the person in the car. “It affects their mates, their whānau and the wider community. We hope the jerseys serve as a reminder to buckle up for the people who expect you to make it home.”
Changing the habit is the hard part. NZTA research found 90 percent of people think enforcing seatbelt use helps reduce road deaths, yet 12 percent admitted to not wearing one in the past month. Thompson said it was difficult to make buckling up automatic for everyone, every time they got in a car, because the behaviour was entrenched.
This is the campaign’s second season. It began in late September 2025, when Northland and Canterbury wore seatbelt jerseys for their NPC match at Semenoff Stadium in Whangārei, which rova described as a first for New Zealand rugby. The classic provincial stripes were flipped diagonally so they looked like a seatbelt.
The Northern Advocate reported in October 2025 that the campaign was targeting Northland’s high number of young male drivers who did not wear seatbelts. Since 2020, 45 percent of people killed in vehicle crashes in Northland had not been buckled up, and in 2025 up to 31 August that share had climbed to 55 percent. Canterbury ranked as the second-worst region, with 31 percent of road deaths since 2020 involving unrestrained drivers or passengers.
When the campaign launched in 2025, NZTA’s head of regulatory strategic programmes Tara MacMillan said, “Rugby is the heartbeat of so many rural communities, so taking the message to grassroots rugby means we’re targeting the group least likely to use seatbelts – men aged 18–39 living in rural communities – through the clubs and communities they are part of.” She also said, “If everyone buckled up, we could save around 20 lives every year.”
A year on, the campaign has doubled from two teams to four, and the toll behind it has grown. When the first jerseys went on in 2025, the campaign put the number of people killed while unrestrained since 2020 at 447. The figure RNZ reported this year is 500.
Northland and Waikato, two of this year’s four teams, met at Semenoff Stadium on Saturday night, when Northland beat Waikato 34-17 to keep the Ranfurly Shield. The jerseys are meant to outlast the match. Canterbury head coach Marty Bourke said in 2025 that beyond game day, that year’s jerseys would hang in community club rooms around Canterbury and Northland to keep the issue top of mind.
New Zealand has fought this battle before. Cars registered after 1 January 1965 had to be fitted with front seatbelts, but front-seat occupants were not required to wear them until 1 January 1975, after Parliament gave motorists three years’ notice in 1972. Seatbelts had to be fitted in back seats from 1979, but rear passengers were not required to wear them until 1989.
Those laws arrived during the worst years in the country’s road history. Newswire’s road toll tool shows deaths peaked at 843 in 1973, on a fleet of roughly 1.5 million vehicles, and fell to 292 in 2024, with nearly five million vehicles on the road. The 1975 seatbelt law lines up with the first big drop in that line. Half a century on, a third of the drivers and passengers killed on New Zealand roads are still not wearing one.
You can see where fatal and serious crashes have happened in your area on Newswire’s interactive crash map, which plots every crash reported to NZTA’s Crash Analysis System since 2000.
Do you always buckle up, even for a quick run down the road? Could a jersey on the rugby field change the habits of the men in your club? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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