Teen's 161km/h driving puts him top of 'bloody idiot' list

A teenager was caught driving at 111km/h over the speed limit. Photo / Thinkstock

A teenager caught racing at 111km/h over the speed limit heads the list of this year's worst speeders - slammed as "bloody idiots" by our top traffic cop.

The worst cases in police records - released to the Herald under the Official Information Act - include an 18-year-old travelling at 161km/h in a Dunedin 50km/h zone, a 28-year-old woman caught on camera doing 159km/h in a 50km/h zone in Gisborne and a 19-year-old man pulled over for driving at 200km/h through a 100km/h zone in Northcote.

In Auckland City, the worst speeder caught so far in the 2011/12 year is a 35-year-old man travelling at 118km/h in a 50km/h zone.

The worst speedsters rank with the most dangerous cases police have seen in recent years - topped by a 37-year-old man who reached 195km/h in a 50km/h zone in Auckland's Waitemata police district on Christmas Day 2009.

Acting road policing manager Rob Morgan said such cases were rare, random and left police exasperated.

"For most police, it's about bloody idiots more than anything. Once we've caught the person, there is nothing we can do about targeting, unless the area is known as an area of high speed and we get a group of people continuously doing high speeds," Mr Morgan said.

"These get known to us as what we call 'hot' locations, and we focus more of our resources on those areas."

But despite the frustrations, Mr Morgan said, the war on speeding was being won.

"We look at the mean speed, we look at the percentage of people exceeding the speed limit by more than 10km/h, and what we are seeing is we are getting a reduction in that."

Mr Morgan said the latest statistics showed a 2 per cent reduction in the number of people caught exceeding the speed limit by 10km/h over the past two years.

This year, the Herald revealed that the total of 63,396 tickets issued from fixed cameras in the 2010/11 financial year was well down on the 105,403 issued in the year to June 30, 2010.

Mr Morgan attributed the drop to a consistent and concentrated approach by police and other agencies.

"It's also consistent with the fact we are making a point of saying it's not just the high-end speeding ... that even at 100km/h, if you have a crash then the results - the damage or trauma caused - can be significant.

"The whole point about it is you can't beat physics. The faster you are going, the less time you have to make decisions."

Under the Safer Journeys strategy, reducing New Zealand's average speed by 5km/h would save 60 lives a year on open roads and 30 in urban areas.

"Those are the outcomes we are looking for - we are looking to save lives," Mr Morgan said.

The objective was to "calm" traffic, and new approaches were being discussed at policy level.

"There are options such as point-to-point cameras and a better network of fixed cameras, and they are signalled in Safer Journeys," Mr Morgan said.

"There's also talk of demerit points for speed cameras and changing the demerit-points system - lowering fines and making demerit points higher. Those are all things on the table."