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We used to have a saying in the Police when you received an order that didn’t make any sense, “There’s no reason for it, it’s just Police policy.” It seemed to be a catch-all for all the non-sensical decisions we would be subject to. And it seems to me that the latest ‘Zero Tolerance’ decision will be seen that way by the current batch of boys and girls in blue.
Zero tolerance has always been a bit of a misnomer when it comes to speed limits. There has always been a tolerance. For most of the time it was 9km/h but in reality, that was only for speed cameras. Cops in cars would have their own tolerance that they were happy with. For some it would be 15 km/h, some a little higher. For me, back in the bad old days, my number was 23. There was so much work out there that if I stopped speeders below about that number, I would probably be missing out on all the really bad ones.
But over the years of successive traffic Superintendents in the Police, there was more and more pressure to write out tickets at lower speeds. Eventually the bosses started measuring how many tickets were issued at each speed band and they quickly realised that there were almost zero tickets being written for the 11 to 15 km/h over the limit band and very few being written for the 16 to 20 km/h band.
So this, and a few international studies that suggest that a lowering of the median speed would lead to a lowering of the crash rate, and therefore the road toll, led to officers on the road being instructed to write a certain percentage of their tickets in those lower bands.
Of course, Cops being inherently bad at taking orders, they just faked it. A speeder would be caught at say twenty something over the limit, but the ticket would be written out for fifteen over. Eventually the spaghetti heads realised this scam was occuring and they started measuring each speed on it’s own and started requiring the Cops to write out a percentage of tickets at each speed, with corresponding returns to be provided each month to make sure they were complying. Quotas? Hell yeah.
So over the years the Cops have had it driven into their psyches that speed is evil and writing what we used to call ‘shit tickets’ is now the norm.
In recent years there was an official lowering of the tolerance to 4 km/h for holiday periods. Even when thick Ministers for Transport came out in the media saying that there was ‘Zero Tolerance’ for the holidays, it was still actually and officially 4 km/h. This also took into account the fact that even official speed measuring equipment has a margin of error of between 1.5 to 3 km/h depending on the device.
So I suspect that the latest announcement from acting Superintendent Gini Welch that the NZ Police would now be operating a zero-tolerance policy permanently will fit into the same category of slightly misinformed. It does, however, mean that the new tolerance will it seems be 4 km/h all the time so be prepared for lots of annoying little $30 fines in the mail.
Yes you can avoid those by driving ridiculously slowly, but things are bad enough out there on a holiday weekend now. I would hate to think that the awful driving that we see during these times, borne from inattention and fear, will now become the norm!
If you have ever driven from Wellington to Auckland on Queens Birthday weekend you will know what I mean. Dozens of patrol cars and even more speed camera vans abound. Punters are so scared of being even one kilometre per hour over the limit they all sit on 90 to 95 km/h, just in case. The biggest problem with that is speedo error, so those people are in reality only doing 85 to 90 km/h.
On a long trip I always use a GPS speedo app on my phone so I have large friendly numbers up in front of my face so I know at all times what my speed is. There are heaps of these type of apps available but my favourite is DigiHUD. The base version is free and more than adequate for my needs, I even use it when racing in Targa. The beauty of this app, and others like it, is that it is accurate, as almost all vehicle speedo’s read higher than your true speed, by law. One of my vehicles reads a full 10 km/h too high. Fortunately, it is very rare for a speedo to read low but it does happen sometimes if incorrectly sized tyres are fitted for example.
The big problem I have with the argument that lower median speeds reduce the road toll is that our median speeds are already lower than the prevailing speed limit in most areas, so it all seems to be just another excuse for lowering limits.
Make no mistake, this announcement is all part of the Green favoured ‘Vision Zero’ plan to bring traffic to a grinding halt. I have written a couple of times in the old blog on Julie-Anne Genter’s favourite ‘car-fascist‘ control device but here is a reminder of what they want in relation to speed limits.
What the hardcore Vision Zeroists want, is a maximum speed limit of 30km/h, anywhere that you might come across a pedestrian. That’s pretty much every single suburban road. A 50km/h limit on every road, (that’s not infected with pedestrians or cyclists), that has a side road or driveways off it, and a max speed limit of 70km/h anywhere that you could hit something head on!
This government is very fond of sneaking in little incremental shifts in policy and law. As far as I’m concerned, this is just another attempt to do the same. There is a petition going around which was started by the Taxpayer’s Union which already has close to ten thousand signatures. Apparently Jacinda Ardern loves getting petitions, so feel free to add your name to this one if you wish. (Click here and magic internet elves will take you straight to it.)
At the end of the day, we shouldn’t be driving in fear and no self-respecting Cop would ever write out a ticket for a couple of km’s over the limit, (although I suspect there might be a few out there with no self respect at all!)
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