Camera snaps 1000 speedsters a month

Auckland's busiest fixed speed camera on Great North Road snapped over 1000 offences a month. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Auckland's busiest fixed speed camera snapped more than 1000 offences a month over a year - but police chiefs are unapologetic and say the message to slow down has to get through.

The camera - on Great North Rd, between Kirby St and Awaroa Rd in Glendene - generated 12,781 tickets in the year to June 30.

It was the second-busiest fixed camera nationally. The busiest was on SH1 in the Manawatu town of Sanson, between Farmer St and Cemetery Rd. It caught 13,593 offenders.

Figures released to the Herald under the Official Information Act show other sites in the top five were all in Auckland: 6859 on Onewa Rd between Birkenhead Valley Rd and Birkenhead Ave; 6491 on Great South Rd, Otahuhu, between Beatty St and Bairds Rd; and 6416 for East Coast Rd, Browns Bay, between Spencer Rd and Oteha Valley Rd.

A total of 105,403 fixed camera tickets were issued nationwide in the year to June 30.

Waitemata road policing manager Superintendent John Kelly said the Great North Rd site was a surprise, but he didn't focus on how many tickets each location generated.

"The concern from my point of view is each one of those is someone speeding in that area ... and those drivers represent increased crash risk and increased chance of causing road trauma ... and that concerns me."

A major reason the Auckland roads featured so prominently was "they're busy roads, which makes compliance with the speed limit all the more important".

Onewa Rd in particular was a busy commuter road leading to the Northern Motorway, and East Coast Rd was a major arterial road.

"The same thing applies to each one of those. Rather than focus on the number of tickets, let's focus on the real issue: the number of speeding drivers. The real issue isn't the fine, because the camera doesn't click unless you're speeding."

Mr Kelly's message for motorists is a simple one: slow down.

"Nothing is more important as arriving. Wherever it is you're going, you're better to arrive a few minutes late than not at all. So that is one of the crucial messages. If you want to get there on time, leave on time. There's no point leaving late and expect to be able to turn the clock back, because you can't. It's not going to happen, a car is not a time machine."

If each ticket issued at Sanson was for $80, which is the fine for going between 11km/h and 15km/h over the limit, the camera would have generated $1,022,480.

The total amount generated from the top five sites, if each ticket was for $80, would be $3,691,200.

Denzil Chin Fatt works at Sassy Cafe on SH1 in Sanson and wasn't surprised to hear the town's site was number one. "There's such a high volume if you look at the number of cars that come through Sanson ... I've been caught by it."

Mr Kelly said a fine was a way of making the slow-down message "strike home".

"If they got stopped and told it was a terribly naughty thing to do and got to drive on, it wouldn't focus them on the problem."

The AA's general manager of motoring affairs, Mike Noon, suspected that offenders snapped at Sanson were people passing through, rather than locals.

"They're not all intentionally wanting to speed, so what that's saying is the road signage isn't explaining to motorists the correct speed ... What you've got is a fishing hole there because it's catching motorists out."