Liz Evans said Rural Women New Zealand had been campaigning for increased safety around school buses for about five years, and the unwillingness of police to issue a national directive around the annual back to school road safety campaign was a perfect example of the frustration the group repeatedly faced in getting consistency in promoting road safety issues.
Rural Women New Zealand wrote to police national manager of road policing Superintendent Paula Rose this week, asking her to issue the national directive after it learned the highway patrol in the southern district would follow school buses on their school routes and monitor passing traffic as the buses pulled over.
The road code requires that vehicles travelling in both directions slow to 20kmh when passing a stationary school bus.
Mrs Evans applauded the decision of the Southern district's highway patrol teams, based in Southland, Cromwell-Alexandra and Oamaru, and said it highlighted a road rule the group believed many drivers were unaware of, and which was "almost universally ignored".
Since 1987, 23 children had been killed in New Zealand when crossing the road to or from school buses, she said.
A further 47 had been seriously injured and 92 had suffered minor injuries.
Eight-five percent of the accidents happened in the afternoon, on the way home from school, and, while 62% of the crashes were in 50kmh zones, 85% of fatalities were on high speed roads, many of which were in rural areas.
"Bus drivers tell us that motorists are regularly passing school buses at 80kmh above the speed limit. This leaves children very vulnerable, especially when they are being dropped off in rural areas with no footpaths."
A police national headquarters spokeswoman said police were happy to support any initiative that made for safer roads, but no direction would be issued nationally.
Each district operated according to a specific risk profile and it was at their discretion what strategies they chose to use to address those risks.
Senior Sergeant Peter Muldrew, of the Highway Patrol, said he followed a bus travelling north on State Highway 1 to Oamaru yesterday and traffic was generally well behaved.
He pulled over one woman doing 107kmh as she passed a school bus that had just stopped in a 70kmh zone.
The woman could have had her licence suspended immediately, but he exercised his discretion and issued her a $300 ticket for being over the 70kmh speed limit.
