Manners matter is message for motorways

By JASON COLLIE, transport reporter

Police are launching a winter crackdown on Auckland motorways with the warning that they hope to catch twice as many dangerous drivers.

Thirty-two motorists a day get tickets for offences such as failing to indicate, tailgating or illegal merging on the motorway network, but patrols have been told to get the figure up to at least 50 over the next two months.

It is part of a motorway manners campaign launched yesterday, and police also plan more drink-drive checkpoints on motorways in a separate crusade.

Four different signs - telling drivers to merge like a zip, keep a safe following distance, let indicating drivers in and indicate before changing lanes - will be posted at 20 on-ramps around Auckland motorways. The same messages will also be flashed on two of the electronic motorway signs on the North Shore.

The campaign, called Moving Auckland Safely, is timed to coincide with the change of seasons, traditionally a black time on the motorways.

Superintendent Alistair Beckett, district manager for the North Shore and Waitakere, said stricter enforcement was needed alongside the educational signs.

"We are looking to up the ante and increase it from 32 tickets a day to 50 over the next two months. I have set the target of 50, but hopefully officers will exceed that."

Eleven people died on Auckland motorways last year - five of them in July - and the campaign aims to cut that by pushing the four basic safety messages and making drivers more courteous.

Councillor Les Paterson, chairman of the regional land transport committee, said: "Most of us notice more courtesy on overseas roads, especially in the UK, where people know that if they do not let people in there will be a crash and they will be held up for hours."

The $40,000 campaign is being run jointly by RoadSafe Auckland, the police, Auckland Regional Council, the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transit New Zealand.

Transit is using the campaign as a trial for running safety messages on its electronic signs, which usually carry only accident or congestion warnings.

Regional manager Terry Brown said Auckland's motorway accident rate of 6.7 crashes per 100 million vehicle kilometres compared favourably with Britain, United States and Australia, but it could improve.

"Crashes on or near interchanges are a problem. The Gillies Ave interchange is one of the worst areas, and we believe if drivers showed better lane discipline these crashes could be reduced."

Police also kicked off their increased drink-drive blitzes on the motorway last Friday night with a checkpoint on the North Shore side of the Harbour Bridge. About 3400 motorists were stopped, and 23 were charged with drink-driving.

Senior Sergeant Warwick Peterson said police would be targeting quieter areas of the motorways.

"We believe we have reduced the speed-related fatalities, and nationally alcohol fatalities have gone down, but at times on the motorway we would like to make a dent in it."

He said 23 arrests out of 3400 was not a bad result, and he was encouraged that none of the readings taken on Friday were more than double the legal limit.