EDITORIAL: Speed fines not cutting Bay deaths | Hawkes Bay News | Local News in Hawkes Bay

PAUL TAGGART

Two related news items in recent days make a mockery of the claim that safety, rather than revenue-gathering, is the driving force behind the police's speed-camera drive.

One of the items outlined the fact that Hawke's Bay was top of the Central North Island speed camera hit parade, with more than 20,000 tickets issued in the region last year.

At an average of $150 an infringement, drivers in the province added more than $3 million in fines to Michael Cullen's surplus.

So surely there would be a corresponding improvement in the province's fatality rate for the year?

Yeah, right. Hawke's Bay's road toll for last year was the highest since 1997.

Thirty-seven people died in Hawke's Bay - between Wairoa and Woodville - which is nearly double the 20 recorded deaths for 2004.

So what has gone so horribly wrong?

After a serious of multiple-death crashes the police came up with Operation Saint Christopher, which involved checkpoints gathering cash from motorists who weren't wearing seatbelts.

There is no doubt that not wearing seatbelts and excessive speed causes deaths, but any casual observer will see those causing the accidents, in many cases, are not the people from whom the police speed cameras are harvesting revenue.

The statistics can be manipulated to make any number of points, and they often are. For example, 23 percent of the vehicle occupants killed last year were not wearing seatbelts. Therefore 77 percent of those killed were wearing seatbelts. Does that mean it is safer not to wear a seatbelt?

The reality is that a high proportion of teenage boys were among the fatalities last year. They can be seen - and heard - every weekend tearing through our cities in the early hours of the morning. Yet where are the traffic cops? Home in bed.

They come out to boost the State's coffers when holidaymakers are driving safely to Taupo at 111km/h. Then there is a good, regular flow of cars, most being driven safely, but they provide a steady stream of cash. Apart from when they are being driven by police officers, of course, as two-thirds of speed camera fines issued to more than 350 police staff last year were waived.

There is nothing magical about the speed of 100km/h. In Australia and Britain the speed limit is higher and in some countries there is no upper limit as motorists are trusted to drive to the conditions. When roads are dry and empty, that may well be above 100km/h.

An arbitrary limit allows sloppy policing. Officers don't have to determine if there has been dangerous driving, as they just ticket everyone.

But the policy alienates huge segments of the public who, a generation ago, would have been the police's greatest allies.

Is is not dissimilar to the case of the security guard at Sunday's cricket game who, by unnecessarily attempting to stop two women kissing, almost sparked a riot. Common sense is required.

Police officers should be more than robotic control freaks. If senior staff looked at and addressed the issues behind the Bay's terrible toll last year then there would be more officers on the roads at night dealing with boy racers, but without the macho aggression that results in young drivers seeing police officers as the enemy. There would also be fewer than 20,247 speeding tickets issued to our region's motorists, most for relatively minor infringements.