Friday, 27 March 2015 - 9:16am |
National News

Summer road safety research shows continued support for speed enforcement

3 min read

Independent research released today into Police's recent summer road safety campaign has revealed continued public support for speed enforcement, with a majority of road users finding the summer campaign easy to understand.

Following the successful Safer Summer campaign from December 2013 to January 2014, which featured a two month 4km/h reduced speed threshold and saw the record lowest ever number of road deaths, Police repeated the campaign in 2014/15, with a strong focus on speeding and other high risk driving behaviours.

"In an effort to steer the public conversation away from a customary focus on 'speed tolerance', the 2014/15 campaign messaging was changed to remind drivers of the safety benefits of driving at, or below posted speed limits. But we acknowledge that in doing so, this generated some criticism that Police was changing its planned enforcement approach with some reported confusion around what speed thresholds were being enforced.  However, operationally the police approach was no different than the previous year," says Mike Clement, Deputy Commissioner Response and Operations.

In response, Police undertook a review of messaging and contracted an independent research company in February 2015 to evaluate the effectiveness and clarity of the campaign. The research sampled 501 New Zealand road users who used a range of transport modes and was weighted by age, gender and ethnicity to reflect the population. The maximum margin of error at 95% confidence was +/-4.4%

"What is pleasing is that overall, the research found a high level of support for the Police's continued focus on speed enforcement and a low level of confusion about the campaign’s enforcement message," Mr Clement says.

"The research also shows the majority of New Zealand road users adjusted their driving behaviour accordingly, with widespread public support for continued enforcement of speed limits.

"This research data has been valuable in helping us assess what worked and what didn't, which will help inform future road safety campaigns."

Key findings of the research include:

  • 62% of New Zealand road users said they had made a positive change to their driving behaviour during the campaign.
  • The majority of NZ road users (64%) said the campaign messaging was clear, compared to 10% who said it was confusing. (The remainder were neutral).
  • Road users were asked to rate the campaign against a range of criteria. The highest rating criteria was that the campaign was 'easy to understand' (67%), followed by 64% who believed it was 'clear'.
  • Research showed public support for Police stopping and ticketing drivers exceeding speed limits. Seventy-one percent of NZ road users believe speeds of up to 110km/h on the open road should be ticketed, and 79% believe speeds of up to 60km/h in towns and cities should be ticketed.

"While the research results are encouraging, Police is very conscious of the need to bring the public along with us during our future campaigns.  We need to be very clear in our public messaging and I can assure the public that this will be the case."

Mr Clement says despite some commentary at the time that Police's approach would see large numbers of motorists ticketed for slight breaches of speed limits, this had not occurred. This was supported by Police infringement data also released today.

"While Police issued an expected higher number of speed camera infringements over the two month period for those caught exceeding speed limits by 5km/h or more, only 33 tickets were issued by Police officers to motorists travelling at between 1-4km/h over the speed limit. This shows that staff are continuing to use their discretion appropriately."

Although more detailed analysis would be required to determine the operational impact of Police's enforcement campaign on reducing road trauma over the 2014/2015 summer period, Mr Clement said it was extremely heartening that there had been a second consecutive record low number of road deaths for the period.

"It shows that the approach taken by Police and road safety agencies through the Safer Journeys strategy, which focuses on ensuring safer road use, safer vehicles, safe speeds, and safer roads and roadsides, is heading in the right direction in continuing to reduce road trauma."

ENDS

The summer road safety campaign research can be found at: http://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publication/independent-evaluation-polices-20142015-summer-safer-speeds-campaign

Updated Police road safety infringement data can be found at: http://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publication/road-policing-driver-offence-data-january-2009-january-2015

Media contact: Ross Henderson, PNHQ Media, ph 04 470 7316; or 021 192 2919.