Safer February starts well

The Police 'Safer February' campaign began well this weekend with few reports of poor or dangerous driving and relatively low numbers of fatalities.

Police will keep the lowered speed tolerance in place at all times during the entire month of February. This means that any driver detected driving at more than 4km over the speed limit will be stopped, breath-tested and action will be taken. The lowered tolerance was introduced at Queen's Birthday 2010 and has continued for all holiday weekends.

"We think this one action alone has made a real difference to the number of deaths on the roads over the holiday periods", said Acting Superintendent Rob Morgan, National Manager Road Policing, "but we are also seeing a reduction in the number of collisions, both large and small.

The Waitangi Weekend road toll stands at only 3 but this will be cold comfort to the families and loved ones of those three people said (Acting) Superintendent Rob Morgan.

"We are pleased with this result but we know that the circle of grief around those three deaths is still something that could have been avoided.

We will keep on changing things, introducing innovations that we believe will help and monitoring the outcomes, but at this stage we know there is no silver bullet. There are instead, incremental changes that little by little, can make a difference.

Our crash analysis indicates that February has the third highest proportion of crashes in which speed is a contributing factor and with this in mind, Police will retain the lowered tolerance for the entire month of February.

At the end of February we will consider the outcomes, and if the analysis supports it, we will consider further long periods or even permanent lowering the tolerance," said (Acting)Superintendent Morgan today.