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| Traffic Ticket Quotas |
The greatest harm can result from the best intentions |
Fact |
LTSA & Police Myth |
| Frontline general police are forced to meet traffic ticket quotas. |
Traffic policing is only directed at bad driving! |
This has to be one of the worst kept secrets of all time. New Zealand Police managers doggedly deny frontline police are being forced to meet traffic ticket quotas, but everyone including the Police Association knows the truth.
See my Official Information Act request, response and complaint for the extent they will go to brazen this out.
However they did provide these departmental forecasts, derived (sometimes inaccurately) from the NZ Road Safety Programme Objectives for each year:
|
Forecasts for Year
(ending 30 June) |
1999-2000 |
2000-2001 |
2001-2002 |
2002-2003 |
2003-2004 |
2004-2005 |
| Speed Camera Offence Notices (000's) |
320 - 380 |
515 - 610 |
515 - 610 |
500 - 550 |
400 - 460 |
480 - 550 |
| Traffic Patrol Speed Offence Notices (000's) |
100 - 120 |
110 - 130 |
110 - 130 |
200 250 |
275 - 325 |
350 - 400 |
| State Highway Patrol (Contacts per On-road Hour) |
|
3+ |
3 |
|
|
|
| Seat belt Notices (000's) |
25 - 30 |
50 - 60 |
50 - 60 |
40 - 55 |
50 - 60 |
60 - 70 |
Note that in 2001/2002 a new target was specifically and publicly introduced, namely that Highway patrol officers should record at least 3 "contacts" per hour of patrol duty. A "contact" was defined as: assistance given to a motorist, a verbal warning or an infringement or traffic notice issued.
Mysteriously after two years this public target was removed, seemingly transformed into an underground, unwritten requirement with verbal warnings no longer counting to meeting the target. Presumably it is concealed in order to allow the police "plausible denial" that ticket quotas exist.
However, it is plain that the police budget and funding by the Government is based on meeting target objectives in the form of numbers of speeding tickets issued per year. There is simply no other possible consequence than that police managers send out their staff on patrol with the demand that they return with the requisite number of tickets per hour.
Take a look at the growth in the actual number of traffic tickets issued by NZ Police each year:
(Source: NZ Police Annual Reports)
Speed camera and particularly Highway Patrol speeding tickets are showing an exponential rise since July 2000.
Now compare the crash statistics over the same period. Deaths and Injuries have trended up and Average Speeds have reduced.
The evidence is spectacularly clear: Hugely increased numbers of speeding tickets and reduced average speeds have had only an adverse effect on deaths and injuries in traffic accidents. Government policies have been a catastrophic failure and motorists are paying the price in every way for bureaucratic incompetence.
Click for more: detailed charts.
Note on the logarithmic scales used in the above graphs:
The normal exponential growth equation is y = eax where a is a constant, x is the time variable and y is the population measure. (e is approx 2.718) This equation applies in situations where the increase in population is proportional to the size of the population, for example where a population has a net increase of 2% per year. (In that case a = 0.02 for x measured in years.)
The natural logarithm is defined to be: ln(y) = ln(eax) = ax. This means that if we plot ln(y) against x we get a straight line of slope = a. This is the reason for using logarithmic scales in these charts. On a normal flat scale we would be observing changes in curved lines - much harder to identify and measure.
We expect that the growth/decline of traffic casualties will be proportional to the total number of them - that indicates a steady trend and will be shown on a logarithmic plot as a straight line.
This was in fact what we see 1994-2000 inclusive - a steady decline in all the death/injury statistics. From 2000 onward that decline has reversed in three out of the four statistics as shown here numerically:
|
Average Annual Changes |
1994 through 2000 |
2001 through 2003 |
| Deaths in 50 km/h zones |
-13.0% |
13.0% |
| Injuries in 50 km/h zones |
-7.0% |
10.4% |
| Deaths in 100 km/h zones |
-1.6% |
-2.3% |
| Injuries in 100 km/h zones |
-3.4% |
7.8% |
Breakdowns of speeding tickets issued (Source - Parliamentary Questions by Tony Ryall, MP):
|
Camera Issued Speed Offences (Traffic offence notices and Infringement offence notices) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Calendar Year |
1-10 kph |
11-15 kph |
16-30 kph |
31+ kph |
Grand Total |
|
2002 |
5 |
318,686 |
125,271 |
4,690 |
448,652 |
|
2003 |
11 |
355,336 |
134,181 |
5,080 |
494,608 |
|
2004 |
440 |
337,196 |
121,612 |
4,918 |
464,166 |
|
Officer Issued speed offences (Traffic offence notices and Infringement offence notices) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Calendar Year |
1-10 kph |
11-15 kph |
16-30 kph |
31 + kph |
Grand Total |
|
1999 |
87 |
2,312 |
91,062 |
31,419 |
124,880 |
|
2000 |
106 |
3,785 |
103,883 |
29,653 |
137,427 |
|
2001 |
338 |
30,836 |
167,004 |
29,571 |
227,749 |
|
2002 |
682 |
76,784 |
208,129 |
27,269 |
312,864 |
|
2003 |
1,581 |
139,567 |
225,735 |
23,312 |
390,195 |
|
2004 |
4,266 |
161,919 |
209,686 |
20,043 |
395,914 |
Officer Issued Speed -Total Offences (TONs and IONs) for calendar year 2004
|
|
|
1-5 kph |
6-10 kph |
11-15 kph |
16-20 kph |
21-25 kph |
26-30 kph |
31-35 kph |
36-40 kph |
41-45 kph |
46-50 kph |
51+ kph |
Grand Total |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Speeding (over 100 kph) - Officer Issued speed offences |
6 |
191 |
16,111 |
12,503 |
6,099 |
2,993 |
1,346 |
660 |
306 |
183 |
123 |
40,521 |
|
Speeding (under 100 kph) - Officer Issued speed offences |
24 |
4,045 |
145,808 |
113,972 |
51,957 |
22,162 |
9,235 |
4,217 |
2,082 |
1,256 |
635 |
355,393 |
|
Grand Total |
|
30 |
4,236 |
161,919 |
126,475 |
58,056 |
25,155 |
10,581 |
4,877 |
2,388 |
1,439 |
758 |
395,914 |
Officer Issued Speed Bands as a % of All Officer Issued speed offences for calendar year 2004
|
|
|
1-5 kph |
6-10 kph |
11-15 kph |
16-20 kph |
21-25 kph |
26-30 kph |
31-35 kph |
36-40 kph |
41-45 kph |
46-50 kph |
51+ kph |
Grand Total |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Speeding (over 100 kph) - Officer Issued speed offences |
0.01% |
0.47% |
39.76% |
30.86% |
15.05% |
7.39% |
3.32% |
1.63% |
0.76% |
0.45% |
0.30% |
100.00% |
|
Speeding (under 100 kph) - Officer Issued speed offences |
0.01% |
1.14% |
41.03% |
32.07% |
14.62% |
6.24% |
2.60% |
1.19% |
0.59% |
0.35% |
|
