Speeding Tickets Treble

Anna Claridge in The Press reports that the number of speeding tickets issued has trebled since 1999.

The Police hierarchy have said the massive jump in tickets is the result of targeted road safety campaigns, but the problem is they are not targeted at all. Targeting is not issuing tickets to every single motorist who drives past, over the limit and tolerance.

The police in Hawke’s Bay were so busy with their speed traps, that they took hours to come out to an unexplained death at the beach. The poor person who had to wait with the body commented “It would seem that, increasingly, the only way to access any service from the police is to drive at 111kmh on the open road.”

Even worse that the local police commander claimed the officer spotted on speed camera duty was dealing with a car crash, yet the Fire Service says it did not attend any crash on the street in question that afternoon. Was he just covering up?

The Police Associaition itself agrees the police image was being tarnished by the policies where police no longer have any discretion to give a warning instead of a fine.