KEY POINTS:
Aucklanders will be invited from today to dob in motorists who drive through red traffic lights, even though promised enforcement cameras will not be installed until late in the year.
The Auckland City Council this morning launches a month-long awareness campaign encouraging the public to report red-light runnersto a special call centre.
City road safety manager Karen Hay said the aim was to educate road users before a $750,000 trial - paid for in part by the council and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority - in which the police will rotate two digital red-light cameras around 11 high-crash intersections.
But Ms Hay said a need for rigorous testing and calibration meant the police would not be ready to begin the trial until the second half of this year.
"This has national implications, so we have to get it right."
That means offenders, unless caught red-handed by police patrols, will simply receive letters from the council explaining how running lights can lead to deaths or serious injuries and asking them to mend their ways.
The city council recorded 427 injury crashes in the five years to the end of 2005 caused by red-light runners, in which seven people were killed and 65 seriously hurt.
Although nobody was killed last year, Ms Hay said there were more injuries than before, and that did not count a crash at a central-city intersection in January in which a motorcyclist lost part of a leg.
The police confirmed yesterday that the crash was caused by a light truck which ran a red light on its way from Hobson St to the motorway junction, colliding with the motorcyclist, who was riding on a green light between Pitt St and Union St.
A Stagecoach bus driver will also appear in court tomorrow charged with failing to stop for police after allegedly running a red light.
Ms Hay noted a regional transport authority survey of 1767 drivers and pedestrians in central Auckland in which 75 per cent said they wanted red-light cameras installed, and 41 per cent deemed inner-city intersections unsafe for pedestrians.
She said an aim of the campaign, to be launched by Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard, would be to make red-light running as socially unacceptable as drink-driving.
Auckland City road policing manager Inspector Heather Wells said the police were fully committed to the trial, having approved it at national executive level just this week.
But although the cameras would "definitely" be in place by the end of the year, it would take several months for them to be tested and calibrated to the standard needed for collecting evidence.
Police calibrations services manager Inspector Ron Phillips said his staff were adding a special T-junction intersection to a private road they used for equipment trials, and were waiting for red-light cameras to be supplied for laboratory and practical tests.
He would not approve the use of any equipment before being satisfied of its accuracy to the last millimetre.
* Auckland City will not disclose call-centre numbers for the campaign until this morning's launch.
