Please attribute to Senior Sergeant Pete van de Wetering, Waikato Road Policing
Waikato Police are urging people to be more careful on the road as we enter the Christmas-New Year holiday season.
Unfortunately, leading up to Christmas in December there have already been three fatal crashes in the Waikato and early indications are they could have all been easily been avoided.
In addition there have been three serious crashes where people have been critically hurt, and again these incidents could have been avoided. Of these three, police are concerned as one of these people is still gravely ill.
Factors that we continually highlight are problems that have been evident in all of these crashes.
- Inattention – being distracted and not being situationally aware.
- Fatigue which leads to inattention and poor judgment.
- Speed.
- Impatience, usually leading to speed and bad judgment.
- Worn tyres on fresh wet roads, which means vehicles are below safety standards.
- Being impaired by alcohol or drugs.
We are doing our best but the public, the people driving cars and trucks and riding motorcycles, have to be on board with us.
Every driver needs to choose to drive well, to be patient when there is a lot of traffic or a slower driver, to be situationally aware and considerate of other drivers and move to the left to let others pass if you drive slowly, and to slow down when you know you’re speeding.
Our staff continually come across people of all walks of life and in all types of vehicles driving at speeds that will kill if something goes wrong – speeds that are considerably over the limit, too often way over the limit.
We recently apprehended a drunk driver with a breath alcohol level that was three times over the maximum allowable level. For that person to drive seems incomprehensible - it’s a crash waiting to happen.
Whether it’s speed, impatience, fatigue, distractions, alcohol or poor vehicle conditions, when things do go wrong because of bad choices, we go to clean up the mess and worst of all, tell a relative.
Police will be as visible as we can to encourage good behaviour and to respond to reports of bad driving but our message and our plea to the driving public is, first and foremost, the buck stops with you.
It’s up to you to decide to drive well, to stop for rests, to not use your cellphone, to be patient.
As we have been saying all December, we want you here for Christmas. Well, we want you here for next year too.
ENDS
Police Media Centre