Police Crack Down on Speeders to Enter New Phase

The recent "zero tolerance" on speeding is having little effect, and police suggest they may need to enter a new phase in order to save lives and reduce the carnage on the road.

This long holiday weekend the police issued 15,235 tickets in the first 4 hours of the holiday weekend to motorists found going over the speed limit by even 4 kph.

"We are ticketing people as fast as they can back out of the drive way", said Officer Paymore, "but the message doesn't seem to be sinking in. We've already had three speed related fatalities.

The first was when a drunk driver, 8 times over the limit, crashed at speeds estimated to be up to 70kph in a 50kph zone. He was also driving disqualified, for the 15th time, but we have ruled speed is the major cause for that preventable death."

The second was when a driver crossed the yellow line on State Highway 1. He was going 103kph, far too fast, and witnesses say he had been tailgating a driver going 70kph in a 100kph zone for 30 minutes, until the pair got to a passing lane. Unfortunately, the lead driver accelerated to 99kph and the following car decided a reckless manoeuvre of passing in the outside lane, pushing the envelope to 103kph and just ran out of time to pass the first car as the road narrowed back to a single lane, as is common on New Zealand highways. He hit an oncoming car by crossing the cetnreline by a fraction, coincidentally, the same action as the oncoming car also speeding to pass a slower motorist, and going a ridiculous 106 kph after being behind a caravan for 6 days and becoming impatient.

The third high speed accident occurred at the Kaiwhara Motor Scooter Club. Apparently, a motor scooter doing in excess of 8 kph collided head on with a modified golf buggy, which short circuited and electrocuted the driver.

"When will people learn that modifying their vehicles and then speeding only leads to death and destruction?" lamented Officer Paymore.

Officer Paymore suggested that the State Highways would receive additional funding to make them safer given the high speed crashes. "A slightly brighter yellow paint down the centre line is called for. I know other countries have state highways of multiple lanes, median barriers and wider carriages, but heck, a brightly coloured yellow centre line on a narrow windy, road is good enough for us. However, if motorists keep speeding we will be forced to lower the upper speed limit from 100kph to 80kph, and enforce the new limit even harder.

The Autombile Association have called for an alternate approach.

"It seems the road toll is always increasing during long week-ends and public holiday's, and the police are out in force at those times. We call for the immediate banning of public holidays, and we would expect there to be zero fatalities over such holiday periods once they are banned."