Queenstown police say drivers need to make better decisions after 45 infringement notices were issued for using a mobile phone or not wearing a seatbelt during a two-day operation last week.
The operation, run in Queenstown and Frankton on Wednesday and Thursday, showed too many drivers were disregarding their safety and that of others, police said in a statement.
Sergeant Matt Hargreaves said any driver using a non-hands-free mobile phone was not paying attention to the road.
Many fatal or serious injury crashes in New Zealand involved distracted drivers.
"You’re placing yourself, anyone else in your vehicle and all other road users at risk."
Not wearing a seatbelt, which could save a driver’s life in a crash, was "just stupidity", Sgt Hargreaves said.
The operation was just a snapshot of driving habits in the resort, and police would continue to target such behaviour with similar operations.
"Ultimately, we want to prevent people getting killed or injured on our roads, but that requires better decisions by those drivers who continue to take unacceptable risks," he said.
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The Police are "funded" so many hours for certain road safety objectives. So it was say 24 hours on seat belts = 6 cops for 4 hours.
Then no more campaigns on that objective for yonks and guess what drivers do??
Campaigns should not be specific nor hours orientated.
Motorists get the mixed message of "no campaign - everyone else does it - so its acceptable". Its human nature to push the boundary and do what one can get away with.
In Chch a decade ago, one cop learnt that "lane sweeping" is not allowed, so he organised a big campaign on Bealey Ave and over a thousand tickets issued, an article in the paper with stunned motorists. That was followed up with a campaign on 'changing lane too late to turn' on Harper Ave. Motorists again stunned.
Since then, no such campaign and everyone does it.
Driving on those 2 roads recently I followed a cop doing both infringements. On coming alongside at the lights I informed him of that and he agreed to pull over. He told me that "those are not offences now". I checked with NZTA and umm yes they are. So I asked him about cell phone use every 4th car. "Oh we're on to that - occasionally".