Police are determined to be the international benchmark for international road policing said Acting Police Commissioner Steve Long on the release of the "Road Policing Strategy 2001 –2006".
"This is not an unreasonable objective given that we have one police service for the whole country and a small population," said Acting Commissioner Long.
The Road Policing Strategy complements the Police strategic plan released recently and the Government’s 2010 Road Safety strategy.
"This is a clear signal that we are determined to make New Zealand one of the top performing countries in road policing, an area currently dominated by the Scandinavians and the UK."
The strategy has four key focus areas:
Engineering
Education
Encouragement, and
Enforcement
"The objective of the focus areas is to secure an environment where people can use the roads with confidence, free from death and injury, damage or fear.
"Towards that end, Police will seek to improve the behaviour of all road users; reduce the level of road crime; make our roads safer; improve the safety of vehicles and involve the whole community in road safety.
"Police and other road safety agencies alone are unable to achieve road safety. Ultimately improvements can only come about through the behavioural change of individual drivers.
" A driver licence comes with responsibilities which should not be abused. The reality is that sometimes the privilege of holding a licence is abused and Police have the unenviable task of bringing drivers to account. We would be delighted if New Zealand drivers took determined action to avoid the pain of road trauma and lowered our workload as a by-product," said Acting Commissioner Long.
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