Doubts over top road cop's speed crackdown on Waikato roads

Friday, 21 August 2020

Waikato road policing manager Inspector Jeff Penno says if people are speeding in Waikato, they can expect a ticket.

Waikato's top road cop is cracking down on speed to “save lives”, but it's not that simple, experts say.

Police data shows that 14,000 officer-issued speeding tickets were written in the first three months of 2020 in the region – up from 8000 during the same period in 2019.

“We enforce speed to save lives, end of story,” road policing manager Inspector Jeff Penno told Stuff.

But experts question whether zero tolerance on speed will change driver behaviour and if other measures would have more impact, such as better road design.

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Professor Samuel Charlton says people tend to decide their speed unconsciously, with habits hard to break.

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Habits, including speeding, are hard to break or change, says University of Waikato Psychology Professor Samuel Charlton, who works in the area of driver behaviour.

“Most people aren’t thinking about [tickets] when they are driving,” he told Stuff.

“If they see a police car they absolutely slow down … even in our driving simulator they hit the brakes.”

Road safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson says many New Zealand roads are like a staircase without a handrail.

Charlton said for some people speeding tickets are effective, especially with the threat of stacking demerit points, but getting people to slow down takes months.

“There are lots of things we could do if we were serious, but it requires really changing how we do it.”

Road safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson said a big issue was New Zealand’s “third-world” highway system, not speed.

“Take a look at any recent highway crash,” he said.

“These crashes almost always occur on roads without median barriers or roadside fencing, or at intersections without roundabouts.'

He described many New Zealand roads as being like “a staircase without a handrail”.

“You make the slightest mistake, you’re going to get hurt.”

University of Waikato Professor of Psychology, Devon Polaschek, said many people don’t see speeding as a big deal.

“If you're on a 110kmh road doing five kilometres extra and nothing happens, you don’t get the message speed is a problem.”

Since most people almost always get away with speeding, she said a punishment system, such as ticketing, isn’t effective.

The faster you go the bigger the mess, but it doesn't seem to be easy to change driver behaviour on the roads.

“It has to happen every time the person does the behaviour [if] you want them to change.”

However, when drivers accumulate a lot of demerits and could lose their licence, she thinks then it could be effective.

“Those people are probably paying attention.”

Over time, she thought the perception of speeding could change, like it did with drink-driving and wearing a seatbelt, which saw big attitude shifts.

“One issue police have is that people are very ready to say police are using this as income revenue and not taking speeding seriously.”

However, money from speeding tickets does not go to the police. It ends up in the Government’s consolidated fund.

Currently both officer-issued and speed camera tickets are paid to police, but Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency will soon take that on.

The new road safety strategy, Road to Zero, will see ownership and operation of the safety camera network taken from police and given to Waka Kotahi, acting manager mobility and safety Lucy Nie said.

“At present, New Zealand has relatively few safety cameras on the network … compared to other jurisdictions, including on a per capita basis.

“The change will involve investing in additional safety cameras, installing cameras on the highest risks parts of the network and clearly signing these cameras to encourage road users to drive at the safe and appropriate speed.”

Charlton said people tend to decide their speed unconsciously and fall into two groups - slow and fast movers.

The former go 10 per cent slower than the perceived limit and the latter go 10 per cent faster.

In speed research on Hamilton roads, he said they saw incredible variation, which is dangerous.

“The bigger the speed difference, the riskier it is.”

But the faster you go, the more likely you are to make an error and the higher the severity of the crash.

“That’s physics – If everyone was going 99kmh, that would be a lot safer still.”

Matthew-Wilson said almost all speed-related accidents involve a tiny group of “yobbos”, impaired drivers and motorcyclists.

“This group is effectively immune to road safety messages.

”Ticketing or disqualifying them tends to make no difference to their behaviour.”

The Auckland harbour bridge used to have one serious or fatal crash a week and Matthew-Wilson said police tried the same enforcement campaigns then, which made no difference.

“Eventually, a median barrier was installed on the harbour bridge and the serious crashes virtually stopped overnight and never came back.

“What does that tell you?'