Five-day traffic blitz nets more than $100,000 in fines

Lower Hutt residents were hit with traffic fines totalling more than $100,000 last week.

A five-day police campaign caught 542 motorists - mostly local people - breaking the traffic laws.

With 10 officers working eight-hour days, the police collected more than $1250 an hour.

Fines ranged from $150 for running stop signs to $400 for breaching the terms of a learner or restricted licences.

The offenders were not all young, inexperienced drivers.

Acting Sergeant Nick Isaac said motorists ignoring stop signs were typically middle-aged and middle-class locals.

"We picked up lots of learner drivers breaching the terms of their licences, and most of them were repeat offenders."

He said that given the disappointing numbers of Lower Hutt motorists breaking the law, police would continue with the blitzes - and might even run them more often.

Some have come up with novel, if illegal, ways to pay their fines.

Detective Sergeant Carolyn Crawford said police recently caught a youth believed to be responsible for some of a spate of radar detector thefts in the city.

"He told us he was stealing them to pay his traffic fines. He was getting up to $350 for them."

The detectors have been disappearing from Lower Hutt cars at a rate of three a week for the past six months. Police had stepped up patrols of carparks to try to reduce thefts from vehicles and the rate had been halved in the past three months, Ms Crawford said.

Meanwhile, the problem of drivers breaching their licence conditions almost led to tragedy in Upper Hutt on Friday night.

Police said a 16-year-old girl crashed her father's new, uninsured BMW into a power pole. The girl, who had a learner licence, was carrying four passengers.

Two were taken to hospital with moderate injuries. The driver, who was likely to face charges, escaped injury but the car was wrecked and power was cut to the area for some time. Speed and alcohol were believed to have been factors.

- NZPA