Two people were found driving well above the alcohol limit by 3.30pm. Photo / Bevan Conley
Two people were found driving well above the alcohol limit by 3.30pm. Photo / Bevan Conley
A swathe of random police checkpoints are being rolled across the Central District, including in Whanganui.
June 9 marked the first day of "Operation Ethos", a police initiative running random checkpoint days throughout the year across the whole police Central region.
Detective inspector Neil Forlong said the operation focused on the acronym RIDS- restraint, impairment, distraction and speed.
"Restraint" referred to seatbelts and helmets.
"Almost a third of people who die on our roads are unrestrained vehicle occupants, which means many of those are preventable," Forlong said.
"It's important for people to know they can be stopped anywhere at any time of the day," Scarrow said.
He said officers had to breath-test every driver, and if they looked impaired would do other drug tests.
By 3.30pm on the first day, Forlong said they had stopped 932 vehicles and breath-tested every driver.
Of those, they found two alcohol-impaired drivers who Forlong said were well over the legal limit.
"Impairment is the easiest to find at checkpoints, and the others were a bit more difficult because it was easy for drivers to put their seatbelts on quickly or throw their phones down," Forlong said.
But this was where "spotters" came in handy.
Spotters are police, sometimes in plain clothes, without police vehicles looking out for things such as people without seatbelts or looking at their phones.
Scarrow said in the first operation of the morning they stopped four people who weren't wearing seatbelts and two people who were on cell phones while driving.
"It's scary how many people still use their phones while they're driving," he said.
Constable Trevor Scarrow said a large part of Operation Ethos was breathalyser tests. Photo / Bevan Conley
"Sometimes they don't even see the police because they're looking at their phone."
He said more spotters would be used in future operations, as they were the best way to find people using their phones while driving.
"You only need to veer a few centimetres off your path and it's enough to take someone on a bike out or veer into the other lane," Forlong said.
"It's really just about changing bad habits."
Under the Land Transport Act, motorists are permitted to use their phone or in-car technology such as a touch-screen head unit as long as it is fixed to the vehicle, but handheld phones are not permitted.
A document from the police national headquarters said speed and travelling too fast to the conditions was a contributing factor in almost all crashes resulting in serious injury or death.
"If you're going faster, the impact is going to be greater and a higher chance of serious injury or death. It's that simple."
He said the idea behind Operation Ethos was to involve non-specialist road policing staff to concentrate on road policing through checkpoints.
"Road policing is a responsibility of all police, not just the highway patrol or dedicated road police," Forlong said.
"When you consider that so far this year in New Zealand 166 people have been killed on our roads, it shows road policing is really important police work."
The Ministry of Transport website reported no road deaths to date this year in Whanganui, but one in the Ruapehu area, and 27 in the police's Central District.
Central District area commander Scott Fraser at a checkpoint breathalysing drivers. Photo / Bevan Conley
Central District Police Commander Superintendent Scott Fraser attended one of the Whanganui morning operations.
