Editorial: Let police deal with drivers

This foreign driver who parked up in middle of a road on the Otago Peninsula, had his keys taken by a local. Photo / Robert Penman

Bagging tourists for their driving habits is now the new trend.

It doesn't take much to set it off. There have been some dreadful smashes on the roads, involving tourists, and people have died.

It's probably not any more deaths than some of our home-grown fatals. When people die in car crashes, the families want to know what the reason was, and sometimes that can take a while to work out. But when it's a tourist involved, it's a ready-made answer on a plate. Chances are, it's probably the right answer.

The head of the AUT journalism school has criticised New Zealand media for its reporting on car crashes involving tourists, according to journalism discussion among my peers. I can't find what was actually said, but there is a point to be made about beating up a tourist's role in a smash. In a smash involving an American in Taranaki, the driver pleaded guilty early and the paper has hit him hard.

And now we have a new, aggressive, self-policing trend: drivers taking the keys off tourist drivers.

It is interesting to note a Herald Digi-Poll, which had more than 6000 votes at time of writing this column, was evenly divided between those who thought keys should be taken off errant drivers, and those who said it was not their responsibility to police drivers.

Yet no one would question removing the keys from an intoxicated driver.

To me there is a big difference between stopping a drunk from getting in a car and trying to curtail a sober driver while on the road. It is potentially a dangerous thing to do.

We don't try to stop speeding teenagers on the road, and most of us would be scared to confront them. But a bewildered tourist is easier. They're in unfamiliar surroundings, and that makes it easier to assert ourselves as citizen police. But it could be placing everybody in an unsafe situation.

The police have authority on their side. We might have righteous indignation, but wielding the law is best left to those in blue.