KEY POINTS:
The police are catching on average 3.5 drink-drivers every hour as one of the country's worst road safety problems continues to rise.
Acting national road policing manager Superintendent Dave Trappitt said the most recent figures available showed 31,000 drink-drivers were caught in the year to July.
Mr Trappitt said this was an 11.9 per cent increase on the 27,711 drink-drivers caught in the previous 12-month period.
The increase indicated the high police "catch rate" of drink-drivers during police stops and check points.
"It's still disappointing," he said.
"When you're out and about, about one in every 100 drivers that passes you on the road is drunk."
Police are blaming younger drivers - those under 20 - for much of the rise, along with repeat drink-drivers who they say are continuing to show up in statistics.
The Herald on Sunday reported that one in four drink-drivers were women, with many carrying children as passengers.
Mr Trappitt said he did not believe the rise was due to heavier police enforcement. He said there had been an upturn in drink-driving, despite public perception surveys indicating that drivers thought they were more likely than ever to get caught.
Drink-drivers aged 17 to 25 featured heavily in the rising figures, he said.
Also worrying was the fact that drink-driving was often combined with speeding and not wearing seatbelts.
A drunk teenage driver was caught in Christchurch on Saturday night at more than eight times the legal alcohol limit.
A blitz of 2500 drivers in the Bay of Plenty over the weekend included a truck driver who drove through a checkpoint and a drunk 19-year-old golf professional who breached a restricted licence.
Meanwhile, police in Auckland are becoming increasingly frustrated by ignorant drivers.
Auckland road policing manager Inspector Heather Wells said the city was seeing more and more drink-drivers under 20 - a fact she found alarming considering that generation had grown up with the anti-drink-driving message drummed into them.
"We've got two sorts of people. There's people that are ringing me complaining about these people all the time ... but you've got these other ones who think 'I want to get from A to B, I don't care'. It's just their attitudes. There needs to be a big change for these members of the public.
"If the public in general saw what our staff had to attend to and the mess, they might actually sit back and think 'oh no', but they don't have to deal with it and they don't have to see it. You speak to some of these people who have lost people through drink-driving and they have a different story to tell about how they hate drink driving."
Four police stings throughout 2007, dubbed Operation Raid, netted 1163 drink-drivers over four nights.
* DRINK-DRIVING
More than 3 drink-drivers are caught by police every hour.
One in 100 drivers stopped by police are drunk.
31,000 drink-drivers were caught in the last year.
