Defaulters pay $1m to save licences

Whangarei Road Safe co-ordinator Gillian Archer

A hardline initiative threatening the loss of driving licences for unpaid traffic-related fines has netted almost $1 million from fine dodgers in Northland in less than a year.

Since February 2014, $601,375.46 has been collected by the Whangarei District Court alone for traffic-related fines and this has been credited to Driver Licence Stop Orders (DLSO). Almost $200,000 was collected from Kaikohe, more than $100,000 from Kaitaia and almost $68,000 in Dargaville.

The DLSO scheme was introduced last February and threatens defaulters with losing their licence for failing to pay traffic-related fines imposed by a court, police or local government authority - or reparations imposed by a court for traffic-related offences. People are sent warning letters and - if the fines aren't paid in full or payment arrangements made - their licences are suspended.

Whangarei Road Safe co-ordinator Gillian Archer said the scheme proved fines deterred people from breaking the law.

"This is obviously a very good initiative on several levels. From a road safety point of view, one of the issues we have had for some time is the lack of validity of fines as a process to mediate people's driving behaviour.

"A project like this enhances the credibility of those fines as a tool to stop people breaking laws which are there to keep them safe. It has long been a concern that among a certain portion of the community, fines are seen as something to be ignored so I think there will be a great many people who will change their attitudes."

Mrs Archer said the initiative was a strong incentive for people to pay fines. "People who might avoid paying fines and are then forced to pay because they can't afford to risk losing their licence will think twice about the kind of offending or the kind of misdemeanours that they have engaged in that caused the fine in the first place."

"My only concern is that, for the large number of high level breaches by people who can't pay, this is not going to do anything to push them to become legally compliant. There are a relatively small number of people in that category and for those people, [the Ministry of Justice] will just have to continue looking at other options."

Nationally, more than $20 million in unpaid traffic-related fines and reparations have been paid since it became possible for people to lose their licence if they didn't pay up.

Justice Minister Amy Adams said the orders helped send the message it was not acceptable or sensible to ignore fines.

Nearly 12,000 warning letters have been sent and 27 drivers have had their licences suspended, while a further 11 drivers had their licences suspended and then reinstated when the fines were paid. An additional 1800 people had a DLSO status as they arranged to pay the fines. Original forecasts estimated $7 million annually would be collected by the scheme.Additional reporting by Catherine Gaffaney