If speed is the single most important determinant of road safety, it must come as something of a disappointment to roading police management that officers themselves are setting a poor example. For any organisation charged with enforcing rules or laws, a degree of credibility rests in adhering to the law itself. The police in particular need to be above and beyond reproach with respect to the law. Unfortunately, figures obtained by this newspaper under an Official Information Act request indicate this is far from the case for driver behaviour.
These show that in 2010, the number of speed-camera infringements notices issued to the police had risen 64% compared with the average over the previous five-year period. It could be argued this compares favourably to the almost 100% increase in the number of notices issued nationwide to the general driving public in 2010; but that sounds like an inadequate excuse and it undermines the determination of the police force to lend the required gravitas and credibility to the matter. Police speeding is also likely to compromise public buy-in to the ongoing speed reduction project - critical to a continuing decrease in the road toll.
As the police's own website points out, road crashes "result in more years of life being lost than any other source of injury and are the leading cause of death to children and of disability to 14-to-44 year-olds". Further, the impact on families, the community and the health system makes road safety "a key public health and injury prevention issue".
Overseeing and policing safe driving on the road is regarded as core business for New Zealand Police, and to this end the "Safer Journeys" strategy was released by the Minister of Transport, Stephen Joyce, in May last year. One of the five central planks of the strategy was working to curb and restrict illegal driving speeds. It is embarrassing to all concerned that the police themselves do not seem to have got the message.
But should not the police have special licence to exceed the speed limit?
They do and they do not. Police are subject to the same laws as other members of the community. They are required to provide an explanation for any speed offences detected and are held accountable for breaches of the legislation where there is no justification or legal defence.
Such a defence usually requires that the officer be "engaged on urgent duty and compliance with the speed limit would be likely to prevent the execution of the officer's duty". In 2010, 941 speed-camera notices were issued to police around the country. Police paid fines on 480 of these, 460 were waived and one ticket was dismissed by an Auckland court.
So, in almost half of the cases detected, the police seem to have had good reason to be exceeding the speed limit: presumably to bring other offending road users to account or in the general discharge of their responsibilities, travelling to crime scenes or accidents and the like.
This is some consolation for police management but insufficient to prevent a degree of tarnish to the central role police have played in contributing to the decline in the road toll. It does not help the case one iota that such numbers of their own are using the roads in such a way as to pose a degree of risk to the general populace. They can and must do better.
And another thing
The abject surrender of the New Zealand batsmen in the face of some lively, but hardly venomous, bowling by the Australians in the first cricket test at the Gabba in Brisbane presages another trying summer for fans of the longer game. It is as if those traditional virtues of patience, determination, grit and judgement have gone by the wayside in pursuit of the glory-or-die approach to batsmanship.
Perhaps sponsored by the greater exposure and fiscal rewards of the shorter forms of the sport, slash and bash have superceded measure and method.
Even average club cricketers know that unless you are outrageously gifted you have to "play yourself in". The current crop of Black Cap batsmen seem determined to show they are neither so gifted, nor inclined to graft.
