Editorial: Unless it's life or death call *555

Still from a video posted to Facebook showing a tourist driver crossing the centre line near Franz Josef.

The hysteria surrounding crashes involving tourists has seen vigilantism hit our roads.

A spate of accidents has led to several incidents in which South Island residents have stopped drivers and confiscated their keys.

I listened to a radio interview with the first of these key confiscators and thought at the time that it wouldn't be long before it turned nasty.

The first two instances, at Franz Josef and near Lindis Pass, were relatively harmless and the keys were handed in at the nearest police station.

Earlier this month, in Greymouth, a motorist signalled a visitor to pull over on the town's Main South Rd and punched him in the face as he seized the keys of the rental car.

Police said the tourist had moved to the right and moved back left in a manoeuvre that did not amount to dangerous driving.

The driver suffered bruising to his eye, his female passenger was shaken and police are seeking their assailant.

This week, in a separate case, a Dunedin man who took car keys from a tourist on the Otago Peninsula was found not to hold a valid New Zealand driver's licence.

Robert Penman made national headlines for his stance against a foreign driver on Highcliff Rd, on the Otago Peninsula.

He stands by his actions but surely a prerequisite for carrying out these sort of vigilante acts would be having your own house in order first.

The problem with vigilantism is that it is only a matter of time before someone, emboldened with a sense of righteousness and a mistaken belief that they can impinge on the rights of others, takes it too far.

People who see dangerous driving should confine their actions to a *555 call to the police unless confronted with an immediate life-and-death situation.