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Speaker 1: Keller du for see Ala Transport Minister Simeon Brown has

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Speaker 1: announced another crackdown. This is a crackdown on drink and

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Speaker 1: drugs drivers. He's given police a series of targets to

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Speaker 1: hit when it comes to road policing, including a target

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Speaker 1: of three point three million breath tests.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: If the cops don't hit these targets, they're not going

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Speaker 1: to get as much funding here as what he said

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Speaker 1: to Mike Costing this morning.

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Speaker 3: We know that alcohol breath tests have an impact untiss

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Speaker 3: a differing alcohol or drunk drivers on our roads, and

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Speaker 3: so it's really important that we have clear targets and

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Speaker 3: we see them meeting those targets on a regular basis

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Speaker 3: to keep New Zealanders safe on the road.

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Speaker 1: Now, Matt Lowry is the director of the Great Auckland

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Speaker 1: Transport Bloggin is with us. Now, Hey, Matt, hi man,

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Speaker 1: I know you don't like targets for the sake of targets,

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Speaker 1: but he's got a point.

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Speaker 2: Isn't it like if you see a.

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Speaker 1: Lot of cop cars out there pulling you over, you're

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Speaker 1: less likely to get behind the wheel when you're under

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Speaker 1: the influence, aren't you.

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Speaker 4: Oh? I think enforcement is absolutely critical for road safety

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Speaker 4: in New Zealand, and I think it's important that the

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Speaker 4: police do have targets, or what I guess I'm concerned

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Speaker 4: about is that we're saying that we have to I

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Speaker 4: think breath testing targets is a good thing. But when

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Speaker 4: we police are saying, when we're saying to the police

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Speaker 4: they have to find a certain number of people a

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Speaker 4: year for speeding or what have you, that that press

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Speaker 4: potential issues and potentially bad headlines for the police in

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Speaker 4: the future and down the road when people think that

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Speaker 4: they're being targeted unfairly. I don't think it's necessarily the case.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, whats going like, do they have not a number

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Speaker 2: of speeding tickets?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so that part of the rules is that they

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Speaker 4: have to issue a certain number of speeding tickets a

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Speaker 4: year and various other offenses as well. And it to

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Speaker 4: be clear, to be honest, I think that is a

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Speaker 4: good thing. We need to target road safety much more effectively.

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Speaker 4: And what we saw and what we've seen in the

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Speaker 4: past is particularly instead of the mid tens twenty ish

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Speaker 4: roads safety actually got worse in many cases, and a

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Speaker 4: lot of that was because enforcement dropped.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you feel about withholding that seventy three

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Speaker 1: million bucks until the target of the brief testing is hit.

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Speaker 4: Well, they're sort of a case of the floggings will

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Speaker 4: continue until morale improved situation where you've got if we've

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Speaker 4: got these, I guess if they don't meet the targets,

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Speaker 4: then the funding will be cut, which will make it

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Speaker 4: harder than to meet the targets in the future. And

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Speaker 4: so it seems a bit of a weird incentive to

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Speaker 4: in place for police to threaten their funding to be

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Speaker 4: able to plan long too to meet these targets.

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Speaker 5: Can you explain something to me, because the reason that

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Speaker 5: doing this is because the NZTA, which basically pays for

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Speaker 5: the breath test, is so frustrated that the police never

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Speaker 5: do enough breath tests.

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Speaker 2: Why don't throps do enough breath tests?

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Speaker 4: I mean, that's a good question for them, that they

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Speaker 4: haven't done enough, and they haven't done enough for a

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Speaker 4: long time. It's only the last year really that they've

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Speaker 4: actually started doing it the numbers that they kind of

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Speaker 4: need to do and then to achieve to be able

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Speaker 4: to get that down. And what we've actually seen is

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Speaker 4: in the last year or eighteen months that the number

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Speaker 4: of deaths on have finally started coming down again.

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Speaker 2: Listen. Thank you very much Matt for talking us through.

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Speaker 2: I appreciate it. It's Matt Lowry, Greater Auckland Director.

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