KEY POINTS:
Police have ticketed hundreds of drivers around schools in a crackdown aimed at reducing the number of children hit and killed by cars.
As children went back to school yesterday, police increased enforcement within 250m of school and pre-school boundaries, ticketing anyone more than 4km/h over the speed limit.
Police national road policing manager, Superintendent Dave Cliff, said today reports back from officers around the country suggested more than 200 drivers had been ticketed in the school zones.
In the past five years more than 1200 child pedestrians have been killed or injured after being hit by vehicles during school terms.
Mr Cliff said the message police wanted to communicate was that people should drive below the speed limit around schools.
"We don't want people driving at the limit. We want people to drive below it," he told NZPA.
"Often if there is heavy congestion, or a lot of pedestrians milling around it's not safe to drive at the legal limit."
He said the faster drivers travelled, the more damage they would do if they hit a pedestrian.
"They are going to have less chance of seeing someone, they are going to take longer to stop and they are going to hit them harder."
Mr Cliff said the ticketing campaign would continue throughout the year.
The campaign is being run in tandem with a Land Transport New Zealand advertising campaign to remind motorists to be careful around schools.
Yesterday Transport Minister Annette King urged drivers to slow down.
Because children were small and often easily distracted and unpredictable, drivers had to be more than usually careful when driving near schools, she said.
LTNZ spokesman Andy Knackstedt said the gist of this year's campaign was there was simply no excuse for speeding around schools.
A child struck by a vehicle travelling at 60km/h had only a 15 per cent chance of survival, while a child struck by a vehicle travelling at 50km/h had a 55 per cent chance of survival.
- NZPA
