Posted on 2-6-2004

Police Loose Their Way
by Alan Marston, 1 June 2004

My observation of traffic police speed detectors is that they are placed
not, as their PR implies to make the roads safer, but to increase
ticketing rates and income from fines. The figures below I believe backup
my claim via the following reasoning.

First, the figures:
Police expect to dish out a quarter more tickets over the coming year.

Estimates in the police's annual statement of intent put the number of
tickets to be issued during the next financial year at between 350,000 and
400,000, compared with between 275,000 and 325,000 this year. The latest
projection means ticket numbers will have almost doubled in just two
years. Police announced last year that tickets issued were set to increase
by a third. The number of traffic tickets issued, which includes those for
red light running and not wearing a seatbelt, is expected to rise by
100,000 to 1.4 million.

Figures announced in last week's Budget showed that total traffic fines
collected by police this financial year would have added $105.2 million to
government coffers over the past year.

Almost a quarter of all police funding goes toward road policing as part
of its Road Safety to 2010 strategy, which aims to lower the annual road
death toll to 300 by 2010. However, last year's road toll of 459 was up
from a record low of 404 in 2002.

Then the reasoning:

1. If the road toll goes up at the same time as the number of tickets for
speeding goes up, then surely the conclusion must be that increasing
ticketing increases death on the roads, the reverse of police PR.

2. If people are slowing down, yet the number of tickets is going up, then
reasoning dictates that the police must be positioning their speed
detectors in places where speeding is difficult to avoid... as is getting
a ticket.

3. On the German Autobahns, where no speed limit applies, I did not
experience a greater feeling of discomfort, quite the contary, by
focussing on my driving and not constantly monitoring the road, the trees,
the byways and the speed detector for traffic police, I felt the level of
safety increased in proportion to the speed limit.

4. With every speed ticket the credibility and trust in police in general
goes down. Sooner or later the police are going to reap what they sow in a
lowering level of positive feeling toward them, and that's not increasing
safety.

5. Drunk drivers are not affected by speed limits, they're drunk.


Conclusion:

Increase the speed limit on motorways and major roads, that will decrease
the road toll and increase the overall good feeling on NZ roads.