Police tactics a failure: critics
MATT STEWART
Last updated 05:00, January 5 2015
Critics have labelled a zero-speed-tolerance campaign a failure after 16 people died on the roads this holiday period - more than double last year's holiday road toll.
The high fatalities have come despite a tough crackdown on speedsters and drink-drivers, and is the highest number of deaths in the holiday period in three years.
By Saturday speed or alcohol were suspected as factors in eight of 12 fatal crashes, police said.
Later that night a motorcyclist, Anthony Clifford Sparrow, 50, from Ashburton, was killed in a crash on Porter's Pass, Canterbury.
Then yesterday morning a man who was travelling on the back of a utility vehicle that crashed in Raglan on Boxing day died, bringing the toll to 16.
The official holiday period started at 4pm on Christmas eve and ended today at 6am.
Throughout the holiday period police had a zero-tolerance campaign on speeding and also targeted drink-driving after lower limits were introduced last month.
But police were left dismayed at the role speed and alcohol played in the high toll.
"This is more than disappointing. It's devastating that so many people have lost their lives these holidays and due to the same common factors," road policing assistant commissioner Dave Cliff said.
"It is a bad decision to drive after drinking. It's that simple.
"No-one can afford to not intervene and stop their family member or friend from getting behind the wheel after drinking.
"You may think it's OK, we'll be right and it won't happen to them. But crashes are happening, people are getting seriously injured and people are dying."
NZ First police spokesman Ron Mark said the toll was evidence the zero-tolerance speed campaign was a "failed experiment" and accused the police and the Government of "stealth taxation" via speeding fines.
"It has precious police resources sucked up making good drivers feel like criminals instead of focusing on those driving too fast, too slowly or too badly," he said.
Drivers were anxious about being caught just over the limit, Mark said: "People are saying to me that instead of driving to the conditions, their eyes are darting from the speedo to road and back again and that every time they see a police car, they instinctively brake despite being well within the speed limit."
Road-safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of The Dog and Lemon Guide, said the idea that heavy speed-limit enforcement would lower the road toll was "nonsense".
He said 80 per cent of road deaths happened under the speed limit.
The remaining 20 per cent of fatalities were caused by high-risk drivers who were "almost exclusively yobbos, impaired drivers or motorcyclists - all of whom are basically immune to road safety messages".
High-risk drivers drove more recklessly during times of prosperity as did the general population who took more risks and drove more when they were feeling optimistic, Matthew-Wilson said.
However, AA spokesman Dylan Thomsen said it was too simplistic to look at short-term trends to measure the zero-tolerance speed campaign's efficacy.
There were seven fatal crashes over the holiday period a year ago, and six the previous year.
During the 2011/12 holiday period 19 died.
With an estimated three million people on the roads every day fatal crashes were statistically rare and Thomsen said he hoped this year's high toll was "just a blip".
- The Dominion Post
http://www.stuff.co....failure-critics
