Enforcement is a critical aspect towards achieving and ultimately improving road safety. Yesterday Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced the government’s new Road Policing Investment Programme. While some parts of it are positive, others are puzzling and ultimately will see a reduction in funding for road policing.
Drunk drivers and drugged drivers will be heavily targeted to improve safety on our roads by the new $1.3 billion Road Policing Investment Programme RPIP (2024-2027) which has been released today by Transport Minister Simeon Brown. The package includes:
- Increased alcohol breath tests with a target of 3.3 million roadside alcohol breath tests per year.
- A focus on high-risk times with a requirement that 65% of breath tests are done at high or extreme alcohol risk times.
- Funding to deliver and implement roadside drug testing with a target of 50,000 tests per year once the new regime is implemented.
- Focussing speed offences on open roads and high-risk locations.
- Performance based funding to ensure targets are met.
“Our Government is focused on improving road safety through road policing and enforcement, investment in new and safe roading infrastructure, and targeting the leading contributors to fatal crashes such as drug and alcohol impairment.
“Today’s release of the RPIP shows a significant step up in road policing and reinforces our Government’s commitment to ensuring there is strong enforcement on our roads to keep Kiwis travelling around our country safe.”
The Government is focusing road policing on seven key areas over the next three years, targeting investment towards the highest contributing factors in fatal crashes.
“This plan has a clear focus on outcomes and has clear targets to ensure Police are focussed on the most high-risk times, behaviours, and locations. The plan will ensure Police target speeding offences on high-risk roads, a clear focus on drugs and alcohol enforcement to deter impaired drivers and expects police to focus on the key times and locations where the highest risk on our roads occur.
“Alcohol and drugs are the number one contributing factor in fatal road crashes in New Zealand. Over 2019-2022, crashes involving drug drivers claimed the lives of an average of 105 people each year and represented around 30 per cent of all road deaths.
“The plan increases the alcohol breath testing target from 3 million tests to 3.3 million tests per year and introduces a new target for at least 65 per cent of alcohol breath tests to be undertaken during the most high and extreme alcohol risk times.
“New Zealand has an inconsistent record with breath tests. Over the past ten years, there are only two in which Police have conducted 3 million tests. Some years have delivered less than half of that number. We know that breath tests have a clear deterrent effect on people who risk drinking and then driving, and we are determined to see more breath tests undertaken so Kiwis are safer on our roads.
“Our Government has also ringfenced $20 million in the RPIP to deliver and implement roadside drug testing in New Zealand and have set targets for Police to undertake 50,000 oral fluid tests per year.
“Introducing sensible and practical enforcement targets for alcohol and drugs will help remove impaired drivers from behind the wheel and improve road safety.”
For the first time, $72 million over three years of funding that is available to Police will be used as an incentive payment to ensure performance against speed, alcohol, and drug enforcement targets. This funding will be released based upon targets being achieved.
“Spending more money will not in itself deliver better results. Despite increases in spending under the previous government the number of breath tests did not meet the target until the 2023/24 financial year. We are determined to turn this around and will use this programme to ensure this happens to keep New Zealanders safer on our roads,” Mr Brown says.
There’s a few things that stand out to me in here.
Funding
Funding for road policing comes out of the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF), which mostly comes from fuel taxes and road user charges. The total funding announced of $1.3 billion over the next three years may sound impressive – but actually represents a reduction on the last three years.
What is most concerning is that the last time National were in government, funding for road policing largely flat-lined; and with inflation, this meant a real decline in how much was being spent. That resulted in reduced enforcement action, which in turn contributed towards the worsening of death and serious injury numbers we suffered on the roads.
This was something noted in the 2018 road safety review for Auckland Transport by Eric Howard.
The most immediate positive change available lies within Road Policing Command. While they have the enforcement role, Auckland road policing had massively reduced resourcing pushed upon them for 2017 following resource allocation decisions (later reversed but requiring 12 months to rebuild capacity) and this has dramatically affected enforcement levels and presence.
Targets
Having targets for levels of enforcement action seems useful, but at the same time it is kind of weird to say the police will have to punish a set number of people. Even weirder is tying financial incentives to that.
Here are the targets the government has set.
It’s notable how little ambition there is in these targets: they are largely in line with what Police have achieved in as a result of the increased funding delivered by the previous government. In the graphs below, the target is shown as the red line. (Note: the Police haven’t yet released stats for the final quarter of the last financial year, so for the 2024 numbers I used the previous 12 months.)
Note in particular that the target for cell phone offences is far less than what police are currently issuing.
I also wonder if, by focusing so much of the enforcement activity on very specific areas and times, whether this might create other issues. For example, the targets mean most of the speed enforcement needs to happen on open roads. But does that mean police will need to pull resources from urban areas? Which could mean we see more crashes in our cities – and those are far more likely to involve people walking and cycling, and other vulnerable road users.
Alcohol and Drugs
The government is focusing most of their attention on alcohol and drugs, saying this is the single biggest contributing factor to crashes at around a third. But that means that most crashes aren’t caused by drunk or drugged drivers – the majority are caused by unimpaired people at the wheel who are speeding, distracted, or just make a mistake. Focusing so much of the attention on the one area risks ignoring those others.
Simeon Brown notes that breath-testing numbers have been inconsistent over the last decade – but as noted above, that is largely because funding was so constrained, and it has taken a while to rebuild that capability. The testing numbers, in a few of the recent years, were also impacted by COVID – with Police saying:
There were periods during Covid-19 when Police were not performing breath screening tests for health reasons, however, it’s important to remember that during lockdown periods there were fewer vehicles on the roads
In short: after major increases in funding by the previous government, the police have only just started to meet the targets the National-ACT-NZ First government is setting. Now the government is cutting that funding while expecting police to achieve the same or slightly higher results. And if they don’t meet those targets, they’ll have funding cut further.
In other words, the floggings will continue until morale (and/or the carnage on the roads) improves.
Note: We welcome informed discussion on this and other topics. For reference, the Ministry of Transport holds a comprehensive set of data (up to 2022) on road safety, including distribution by age and travel mode, the various contributing factors, and the social cost of road crashes.
And if you’d like to support our work – which includes data-rich analyses of the stories of the day like today’s post – you can join our other supporters here!
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It’s an absolute no brainer for WK or someone to fund an online reporting portal for the Police so people can upload their own dashcam or cycle cam videos like I can here in London.
It must be about the most cost effective form of policing around as you only need about 10 people in NZ to review 100 or so submissions a day and it helps build the impression that you could get caught being a shit driver anywhere any time, rather than being able to break the law with impunity like most NZ drivers can now
The amount of cellphone users behind the wheel a single person with a helmet camera could catch on any NZ street on rush hour would be insane
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/30/rise-in-dashcam-submissions-leads-to-more-dangerous-drivers-being-caught
Great idea, great link.
Also – how come the target for cell phone infringements is just 40,000 a year? Feels like you’d see that many a day in Auckland alone.
I guess the target would be much higher if cameras were used only so many people police can manually write tickets for.
The fine print.
“Number of drug-impaired driving offences: Monitored for operational purposes only”
The number of tests administered is just an output measure.
Number with impaired driving is an *outcome* measure. But the current roadside tests cannot measure that.
strange then that they targets are for drug and alcohol *tests*, but for speeding, seatbelt and phone *offences*
one stat that worries me a bit is they expect about 85% of speeding offences to be doing more than 11km/h over the limit, whereas I would have expected (especially with automated enforcement with cameras) most speeders to only be speeding by a little bit because of, like, a normal distribution with the speed limit as the centre.
The other thing that is missing here (is it because Police have abandoned this to Councils?) is red-light camera offences. My bubble (unrepresentative as it is, I have no better source) seems to consistently want more enforcement of red light runners. Are these offences supposed to be captured by “dangerous driving offences”?
It would have been nice if they had announced a review of the offences and penalties regulations as well, to update the fine amounts, but I expect this government will use the same spurious “cost of living” argument as the last one…
I think the data will show most DSI for less than 11 km/h above the speed limit. And if the speed limit is going to be set at more than the survivable safe speed, then there will be little or no policing of the most harmful speeds.
How does our policing and safety budget compare to other successful countries per capita? I’m fan from a National supporter but to the naked eye it seems like we were spending more and more each year for pretty much a stagnant rate of fatal crashes per year. I’m sure we could spend less the acheive more here – fixed cameras, massively higher fines, harsher punishments (I was shocked at the leaniency of DUI punishments here when I moved over from the UK 14 years ago). Agree with the comments that 30% means that it’s actually the minority in terms of crash reasons, has there been any studies on the data around young people, Gen Z and below who are both not taking up driving AND drinking less/not at all. Surely this sort of data would help for future planning and budgeting.
I can only imagine how much money could be saved while also getting better outcomes though technology. Instead of raised pedestrian crossings for example, just paint them, give them a 30km/hr max speed limit, and put a speed camera box pointing at every one.
I’d probably vote right if they weren’t so damn hypercritical and self invested. They should be all for automation and efficiencies; but when it comes to speed cameras they don’t want to annoy their voters. Its the same with the “small government” and “less bureaucracy” ACT party who think its fine to tell the people of Tamaki and Epsom what they can and can’t build on their own land.
It would help, but I doubt it helps as much as a raised table, which has massive crash reduction averages (over 60% for serious and fatals compared to a paint-only zebra).
Of course the example you describe will never happen because such enforcement cameras would quickly be decried by the Herald as “revenue gathering”, especially where lots of rulebreakers get caught.
On the subject of speed cameras, National are going to put signs telling you where they are. Apparently it was Genter’s idea?
What do people think of this? Surely it significantly reduces their effect on speeding if you know where they are!
Safety camera partnerships in UK 25 years ago included signs for fixed cameras as standard. The purpose of cameras is to persuade people to drive at safe speeds. Point-to-point cameras can extend the deterrent effect of camera sites (difficult to use in urban areas where the distance between intersections is small). The message is “It is dangerous to travel faster than the speed limit on this particular piece of road (and if you do, it will cost you).”
Doesn’t that also imply the opposite on other roads: “It is not dangerous to travel faster than the speed limit on this particular piece of road, and if you do it is unlikely to cost you”.
The UK had speed cameras every few kms, and signs everywhere. They even had a line painted on the road where the speed camera was pointed (not sure they still do). Surely that is much more expensive and less effective than having less camera’s randomly located and you know you could get fined anywhere?
I think a combination of fixed (sign posted) and mobile cameras, is the best approach. Keeps the general population happy, reduces speed but we can still catch the real sneaky speeders from time to time.
Just need more of them, I think we had a drop in the number at some stage when transferring to modern digital ones. One ones needed somoene go and empty the film thingy or something.
Used to be one in the dip in the road along Waipuna Rd, think it’s still not replaced.
iirc when we first got fixed speed cameras they were in accident blackspots and had warning signs as a deterrent, on the grounds they were there to reduce speeds and if no tickets were issued then that objective had been achieved. Then there was a flip-flop in thinking, where the “success” of a camera was judged by how many tickets it issued not by how many drivers obeyed the speed limit, perversely ranking the least effective cameras as the most “successful”.
Genter did have the idea but failed to deliver. Grant is correct a mix is the best approach. NSW signposts all cameras mobile and fixed and their road toll is lower. The only thing that happend when they removed warning signs is fines went up but the road toll did not come down. The old cameras grant are referring to required wet film to be purchased and also needed sensors under the road to detect speed which were wouldn’t work if more than one car was in the photo and was inaccurate hence the 10k tolerance. The new REDFLEX NK-7 cameras use radar and digital photos so can monitor multiple lanes of traffic. They still require manually downloading photos so while its more convenient than film it’s similar in terms of having to take the camera out of the housing.
Thanks for the info. Wow they don’t have a 4G wireless or similar connection for getting the photos yet? Guess the security or cost could be an issue. Pehaps that will be the next generation of cameras, the quicker the fine can be sent to the person the better. We all hear of the people clocking up multiple tickets before getting the first one in the mail (or for that matter bus lane etc tickets). NZ Post is too infrequent now so should have some optional email system for via our vehicle car regos.
Apologies Grant was tired when I wrote that and realised I’ve worded it incorrectly. I would like to correct some facts, the infringements are transmitted wirelessly from most fixed cameras through a “secure network”. This includes the red light cameras using similar REDFLEX tech. Now I believe the cameras aren’t always on as they likely turn off while transmitting data which isn’t exactly what you want.The same model used in the Vans is downloaded by the operators. The very manual process comes into play once a year when the camera is taken out of its housing and shipped to Wellington for calibration. Basically many cameras are out of action for a bit while this process occurs and obviously as the number of cameras has increased the calibration service is more overloaded. I agree it would be great to have some sort of instant way to tell people that they were speeding by email I would imagine this would require too much power draw on the camera unit as it would likely need air conditioning to run AI functions and the rest. The reason why the lag is so big is the camera takes the photo then they have to download it, then it goes to the fine processing then it’s put on the post not exactly a quick process although obviously better than taking wet film out lol. If you’re interested in the old tech I believe the cameras were AutoPatrol SP 200 models using wet film lol. It really is amazing we kept using that until the early 2010s.
The media in NZ are so bloody lazy. The headlines were all “National are spending $1.3 billion on policing”, not “National reducing policing”. I thought it was new money (although it seemed like a lot!), and no doubt most of the public do too.
They get a press release from the govt, do no research whatsoever, and spend most of their time working out how they can make it a catchy headline that people will still click on.
Of course, that’s the business model right there. They are paid based on eyeballs viewing catchy headlines, not subscribers wanting decent content. Race to the bottom.
The media are allowed to be lazy because Labour are so bloody useless that they don’t seize on any of the flubs and scandals and actual hate crimes coming out of this government.
I’d expect that from Hipkins, but I can’t understand why the Greens and TPM aren’t making any headway either.
“I’d expect that from Hipkins, but I can’t understand why the Greens and TPM aren’t making any headway either.”
Because our society is so polarised that a large part of the society just turns off on anything the other party says, and automatically considers it mere fake news or blatant propaganda, even if it is right, and even if the other party has a habit of being more truthful. See how Republicans in the US ignore even perfectly true statements from Democrats because “they are all woke liars”.
We never had a totally shared agreed set of truths in society. That never existed. But we HAVE drifted apart much more on any sort of consensus over the decades, driven by clickbait news / social media, it is frightening sometimes.
Yes, when is the average citizen going to wise up.
Does anyone have the figures on how much the camera programme cost? Just wondering maybe it’s a real term increase as they won’t have to pay for the camera infringement costs.
You keep asking this but you do know WK aren’t doing it for free right?
Yes but the current Camera programme costs money in the police budget. NZTA will take over reducing the resource burden on police. Police are currently using REDFLEX NK-7 cameras which are surprisingly labour intensive as it requires manually downloading the infringements off the cameras they aren’t transmitted wirelessly like you’d think. Then obviously all the actual processing of said infringements requires a lot of staffing which NZTA will take over as well further reducing the burden. This effectively means police should save money I would suspect this will work out to mean they have roughly the same budget not an increase or decrease.
This is why the financial set-up of UK Safety Camera Partnerships is so effective. Fines are ring-fenced (hypothecated) to cover the cost of police and courts, as well as cameras and back-office IT and processing, instead of going into Treasury’s money bucket.
Could the government perhaps target a number of less driving under the influence; because public transport options are improved, and made more useful for night time users?
Is it a worthy target to test approximately 60% of our population with a breathing apparatus; or better to make it easier to breathe by removing noxious gas emitting vehicles from our roads?
Do our police need to be put in more danger from intoxicated persons? Or should we target social services and education to attempt to reduce the harm that pervasive legal drug use has caused our society?
Drinking is killing us. I am an alcoholic, I enjoy drinking, I always will, but I do not drive, ever. So I can be a little bit drunk on a bus, or on a train, or stumbling through Myers Park. I am not going to hurt anyone. Driving is killing us too.
bah humbug
Great article, but too fact driven for this Government. Let’s not forget that Simeon Brown specifically said he wanted speed cameras to have warnings so drivers could have a chance to slow down. Brown, the consummate caring Christian, doesn’t seem to care about road deaths and the impacts of those at all.
Surely any area where someone is speeding becomes a blackspot. If you seriously want people to stop speeding, you want them to think camera’s could be anywhere. I can’t recall the last time I saw a police van speed camera in Auckland.
I don’t drive on the motorways too often, but saw one on the Upper Harbour motorway on Saturday, and have seen them on the Northwestern several times in recent months.
If you haven’t noticed a police speed van in a while you either drive on minor roads only or just aren’t very observant. Blackspot meaning accident just because people are speeding doesn’t automatically make it dangerous. For example the Waikato expressway is actually safe for up to 120kmh but the speed limit is artificially set at 110 and even though many people speed it isn’t making it dangerous. It’s been proven time and time again that hiding speed cameras does nothing but increase the amount fines issued. If you tell people slow down here most of them will. Police handle the anywhere anytime approach. NSW has signs on all speed cameras including mobile ones and their road toll is lower when they removed warning signs for a little bit fines skyrocketed but the road toll didn’t drop.
The unknown factor with Simeon Brown – he may care, but does he understand what he is doing? He doesn’t seem willing to listen to any professional expert consensus, to deliver on his care.
I get the impression they are following Boris Johnson’s lead and every decision is based on “focus groups” and not “panels of experts”.
Bingo. The govt is focused on votes. “Experts” don’t share the same view as what the public want making their opinion worthless.
Thanks for this Matt. Last night when driving with family it sounded like $1.3 billion in NEW funding!
Deliberately. And media play along.
Oh course, and every party has done this for many many years. It’s our absolutely awful media other than the likes of Jack Tame who just repeat whatever they are told. As mentioned before though, if you get someone like a Jack Tame on Q&A calling out evidence and telling the truth they get labelled left wing shills etc. It’s almost like telling the truth became a political ideaology.
I hope the road-side drug testing will be better than Australia’s attempt.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-15/roadside-drug-testing-highlighted-by-drivers-loss-of-licence/103583254
I doubt it will be any better….
Interesting, as I didn’t know much about this, obviously is a bit tricky to test accurately in a quick single test, so need good follow up and right to review your test procedures.
It’s absolutely wild to me that growing up I was so used to hearing the road toll expressed in hundreds of people e.g. 300s or 400s this or that year.
That the road toll has come down is marvellous – that’s fewer people affected, fewer communities suffering.
That makes no sense to me. We would never want the state to subsidise general food costs, why would we want that for transport?
Infrastructure can be a long-term social good.
Interesting chart, Patrick. I’d like to put another stacked column alongside each year to show types of spend. eg; System Overhead, Active Modes, Maintenance, Policing & New Builds etc.
I think we would find;
The Key govt built their RONZ via crown loans and reallocation of spend from other areas.
The English govt set out to expand RONZ by PPTS & more Crown Appropriations.
The Ardern govt stopped that but had to kick start the economy post covid so adopted the English plan anyway as ‘shovel ready’ and funded via crown appropriations.
Now as fuel use & road taxes decline, crown loans and appropriations max out we’ve seen active modes spend slashed and we’ll see more slight of hand that reduces Policing & other non-RONZ spending.
Meanwhile the Fat Controller has been in Sydney learning about funding infrastructure – roll-on PPPs.
Anything to stay on the road building drug
The only way to get the 3 million tests was by running checkpoints at peak times with the lowest chance of catching drink drivers. If you ran them after peak you didn’t get enough tests and you got more drunk drivers which then meant you couldn’t test more while you spent 2 – 3 hours processing them. Also the test numbers were required by ACC who funded all the Booze Buses and wanted them as proof they were getting bang for their buck.
When I suggested strategies in my district such as targeting day time drunk drivers at bottle stores or high visibility set ups with an obvious escape route to funnel drunk drivers I was told NO by the district bosses as they knew we would get a lot more drunk drivers amd ‘didn’t want to make it look like a sudden spike in successful enforcement meant we had a drink drive problem’ in our district.
I worked on Traffic Alcohol Group TAG for 3 years and as my old matenwohld say…the A is silent.
I’d also like to note that the lowest road toll in NZ history was paired with the highest level of Road Policing enforcement outcomes in history and in response they got rid of Superintendent Paula Rose then lowered expectations around enforcement by half. The results now speak for themselves.
That is fairly chilling.
The law is as much about, in fact possibly even more, on how it is enforced, rather then statute texts.
Speed limits being case in point.