Road-toll heat on drink drivers

By MATHEW DEARNALEY and MONIQUE DEVEREUX

Police are widening the scope of their fight against fatal drink-driving accidents by almost doubling the number of booze buses patrolling roads.

Four more buses will be introduced next month, boosting the national breath-testing fleet - which ACC provides to police - to nine.

The road-based campaign will work in tandem with the Land Transport Safety Authority's shock advertising, aimed at combating drink-driving, excessive speed and failure to wear seatbelts.

The authority spends about $7 million on the campaign each year, despite the advertising being criticised by some road safety advocates as failing to get through to hard-core offenders.

The critics say the only way to get through to these offenders is by enforcing driving and vehicle standards.

Police believe the deterrent effect of the booze buses played a large part in reducing the number of positive alcohol results by more than 5000 to 12,051 in 1999, from between 1.5 million and 1.8 million compulsory breath tests conducted annually.

The booze bus is a specially adapted vehicle which is used during large roadside breath-testing operations.

Drivers are pulled over and asked to say their name and address into a hand-held "sniffer" which shows up even a slight amount of alcohol on the driver's breath.

Drivers who fail must complete another test by blowing into an intoxilator bag. If this test is also failed, they have take an evidential breath test in the booze bus.

The booze buses are kitted out with four cubicles with desks for officers and drivers to sit at, as well as a computer area and a private, sound-proofed room for drunk drivers to make telephone calls.

Auckland has three of the buses, with the others stationed in Christchurch and Northland.

But from next month drinkers in Waikato, Manawatu, Otago and Southland should be extra certain they are not over the limit before getting behind the wheel, or they may be subject to a first-hand experience with a booze bus.

The bus based in Dunedin will have a high-profile launch at the Bledisloe Cup rugby match between New Zealand and Australia on August 11 - part of the police strategy to go out of their way to deter drink-drivers.

Superintendent Dick Trimble, of the Auckland motorways police, said it was not so much that the police wanted to be spoilsports by parking the buses outside big events even before the entertainment started, but a reminder to drivers.

"It allows people to make a value judgment, knowing we'll be there when they come out - we would rather do that than have to go back and pick up the pieces."

Alcohol re-emerged last year as the prime cause of fatal road smashes, overtaking excessive speed for the first time since 1992, although the overall road toll reached a 36-year low of 462 deaths.

Alcohol-affected drivers were blamed for 27 per cent of last year's 383 fatal crashes, compared with 23 per cent of 434 fatals in 1999.

Speed, which accounted for 23 per cent of last year's fatal pile-ups, is the main target of new rural highway patrols, which the police have introduced after criticism that their members had all but disappeared from sight to long-distance motorists.

Police national road safety manager Superintendent Steve Fitzgerald said there were now 174 officers in 120 patrol cars roaming the country's highways.

This will rise to a full complement of 225 police in 183 cars by the end of the year.

Mr Fitzgerald said this would mean more law enforcement officers on the highways beat than when the Ministry of Transport had its own traffic officers almost a decade ago.

The police have yet to make a detailed assessment of the patrols' effectiveness, but Mr Trimble said tow-truck operators in Rodney District, where he has 17 highway patrol staff, report doing a lot less business and vehicle speeds are markedly down.

The road safety programme manager for the Accident Compensation Corporation, Bill Robertson, said ACC had trebled to $600,000 its annual anti-drink-drive advertising budget to boost the profile of the booze buses.

A similar amount would be spent trying to persuade motorists to reduce speed.

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