It's getting tough out here

Kaitaia might not be the parking warden's main target, but can expect the occasional visit. Photo / Peter Jackson

So the Far North District Council is going to charge its apparently solitary parking warden with ticketing parked vehicles that are not displaying a current warrant of fitness or registration. That will not be good news for some, given that the cost of legally maintaining a vehicle for use on a public road has become exorbitantly expensive, and increasingly so with every lift in the registration fee, and the price of petrol.

There is no argument that vehicles need to be registered, although the cost of that might be difficult to justify. There is obviously some administrative cost, but it is basically a tax. And why would the council volunteer to serve as a tax collector for the government? Apparently, as part of its contribution to reducing the road toll. It's all part of the government's Road to Zero strategy, which is aimed at reducing road deaths and serious injuries by 40 per cent in the next 10 years.

That, perhaps, is a little more realistic than the stated aim of Green MP Julie Ann Genter, who, as Associate Minister of Transport in the last government, set a target of reducing the road toll to zero, but it's difficult to see how dispensing $200 tickets for failing to comply is going to make much difference. The council says it's not about revenue gathering, but it is. It has nothing to do with safety. Which would you rather encounter, an unregistered car with a sensible driver or a compliant one being driven by a lunatic?

We could just about forgive the government for failing to understand what real life is like for many New Zealanders. This lack of understanding is revealed in all sorts of ways, like bumping up government fees and charges, assuming that they are affordable. Like believing that, if we really wanted to, we could all embrace life online. If some genuinely can't, well, they are such a small minority that they don't count. Like people who are struggling with the demise of the cheque book.

We have seen no explanation from the council as to how fining the owners of non-compliant vehicles is going to make our roads safer, and we're not likely to. The Northland Age doesn't have specific figures, and nor will the council, but there is unlikely to be any correlation between a lack of registration and death or serious injury on the roads. It might even be difficult to prove a significant link between serious crashes and the lack of a warrant of fitness.

Yes, every car should have a warrant of fitness, for the protection of those who travel in them as much as anyone else, but is there really any potential to reduce the Far North's admittedly horrific road toll by sooling the parking warden on to those who can't afford one? There is much, much more that can and should be done to make roads safer, not least in the Far North, than hunting down non-compliant cars.

Genter, while she was in a position to make a real contribution to road safety, didn't. Her undertaking to install hundreds if not thousands of kilometres of median barriers on state highways throughout the country turned out to be just another empty promises from a government that specialised in empty promises.

Now we're hearing people who know Northland's roads better than most say they are the worst in the country. And what is Waka Kotahi NZTA doing about that? It's proposing to lower speed limits. What's that if it's not an admission that it's given up on making those highways fit for purpose? We keep hearing that Northland's topography makes road-building challenging, but it isn't topography that makes tar seal lift. That's a lack of maintenance, or perhaps poor construction in the first place.

Claiming that the ground in this region is not conducive to building decent roads doesn't wash any more. There are some specific locations, like the hill on SH1 south of Umawera, that have long been problematic, but the real issue is a lack of maintenance. And it's going to get worse. The Northland councils' government funding for maintenance has effectively been cut by the same government that has taken $760 million out of the kitty, almost precisely the proposed cost of a cycleway over Auckland's Waitematā Harbour.

There is no need for lower speed limits, at least for those who drive to the conditions - they won't make any difference to those who don't - although it has to be said that some of our highways are of a very high standard. If physical improvements are needed, in many cases that would involve getting rid of corners rather than improving the surface.

Surely, though, the big problem, here and elsewhere, has nothing to do with warrants and regos and everything to do with the way we drive. Speed, beyond the ability of the driver to control the car, driver impairment, whether that be down to drugs, alcohol, tiredness or inattention, are what kills people. The council can't do much about that, even with an army of parking wardens.

Meanwhile, we might well return to the days when people used to turn up in court in their droves for non-payment of fines, often amounting to thousands of dollars, accrued as the result of driving a car without a warrant or rego. Many of them lived far outside town, and were totally dependent upon having a vehicle. They would drive to town out of sheer necessity, to buy groceries, seek medical attention or whatever, and would be pinged almost every time.

They couldn't pay the fines, so they eventually found themselves in court, where they would usually be sentenced to community service. They would then start collecting fines again. And that is fundamentally unfair.

To its credit, the council isn't relying on fines to make our roads safer. It is also reviewing speed limits - at the behest of the government - installing safety devices such as rumble strips and roadside barriers, and working with communities on road layout changes, supposedly to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. We will never know if any of those save a single life, but none will have any impact on our standard of driving.

Meanwhile, targeting vehicles without warrants of fitness and/or registration will be akin to shooting fish in a barrel. A recent council survey of parked cars reportedly found that one in six were non-compliant, so this exercise, which has nothing to do with raising revenue, will be a tidy little earner. And it will make life even harder for those who would comply if they could afford to.

The good news is that the council currently employs just one parking warden, and doesn't appear to have any plans to appoint more. That might well change though.

It seems that the warden's main hunting ground will be towns with 'parking issues,' including Kerikeri and Paihia. Kaitaia and Doubtless Bay can expect the occasional visit, but Kaikohe might be spared. If that's the case it will give some small credence to the claim that this isn't about revenue, but will weaken the argument that it's promoting road safety. Without casting aspersions on the good people of the Hokianga, one might expect more non-compliant vehicles to be found in Kaikohe than in Kerikeri.

Whatever happens, anyone whose vehicle doesn't come up to scratch would be advised to avoid using the Kerikeri Post Office carpark, which has a reputation as a happy hunting ground.