Get killer cars tuned or choke

The billboard on Fanshawe St that will darken to show the effects of car fumes. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Drivers are being urged to consider the fate of ill or elderly relatives and neighbours, as well as financial cost, before making unnecessary car trips.

The Government yesterday launched a $575,000 national billboards and media advertising campaign in Auckland, challenging drivers to "choke the smoke" by reducing vehicle emissions.

Associate Transport Minister Judith Tizard said that although the Government was progressively tightening vehicle and fuel standards, even the best-performing car pumped out emissions when running cold.

"So if you have a journey that's less than about 3km, you are polluting regardless of how good your vehicle is and regardless of how good the fuel is."

That meant a cost to the environment and to people's health, particularly those with bad heart or lungs.

Ms Tizard said drivers should consider taking public transport or walking, particularly on short trips such as to the corner dairy, and to send their children off each morning on "walking school buses".

"Every journey you don't take improves the atmosphere. We have a study that shows about 250 Aucklanders a year [of 400 nationally] are dying early of conditions made worse by vehicle pollution."

The Government's campaign precedes the addition by the end of the year of a "visible smoke check" to tests for warrants or certificates of fitness. Although the police are already empowered to issue $150 infringement penalties to drivers of vehicles emitting excessive smoke for more than 10 seconds, Ms Tizard expressed frustration that greater efforts were not being made on that front.

"The numbers don't impress me, and the complaints I get are that we are still seeing a lot of smoky vehicles," she said.

The Ministry of Transport website puts the average number of infringement notices issued between 2001 and 2004 at below 300 a year.

That was questioned last night by national road policing manager Superintendent Dave Cliff, who believed the numbers were higher.

He said that although he could not verify the numbers until today, extra budgetary provision for more police vehicle compliance staff should boost efforts from early next year.

The Government's publicity drive and proposed testing regime is backed by the Motor Trade Association, whose member service stations will be directly involved, but which does not believe it will boost the warrant of fitness cost by more than a dollar or two.

But the Green Party and the Motor Industry Association are disappointed the Government has backed away from more sophisticated instrument testing for allegedly being too expensive and producing unreliable results. Officials feared such testing would add between $35 and $60 to the cost of gaining a warrant, and Ms Tizard said yesterday that the visible smoke test was a good indication of an untuned engine.

Motor Industry Association chief Perry Kerr said that may be true of diesel engines, but smoke from a petrol-driven vehicle was a sign of far more serious problems.

Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said she believed the Government had taken fright at the potential political consequences of introducing instruments tests, given the large numbers of vehicles these may catch.

"But it can't have it both ways," she said.

"Either you have 400 people a year dying early from vehicle emissions or you put some of them off the road."

Tune up or out

One of more than 30 billboards erected in Auckland to drive home the tune-up message is doubling as an air-pollution monitor.

The billboard, erected in Fanshawe St on August 1 in advance of yesterday's official campaign launch, becomes clearer every day to passing motorists because of adhesive material which absorbs fine particulate pollution.

What began as invisible lettering had by yesterday emerged as a grey outline of a sentence warning motorists that the effects of car fumes "are visible over time".