A crackdown on speeding over Labour weekend snagged 130 Wairarapa drivers and netted the government triple the fine revenue compared to last year.
This Labour weekend police lowered the tolerance for travelling over the speed limit from 10km/h to 4km/h.
Police issued 130 tickets compared to 26 last Labour weekend when therewas no blitz, according to statistics released to the Times-Age under the Official Information Act.
The value of the fines totalled $8130 - tripling last year's total of $2700.
Of those tickets, 79 were issued by police and 51 came from speed cameras.
While there had been seven deaths nationally, Masterton traffic policing Sergeant Chris Megaw said there had been no deaths on Wairarapa roads and therefore the weekend was a success.
He suspected the government would now apply the 4km speed rule - first introduced on Queen's Birthday weekend this year - every holiday weekend.
He hoped it was coupled with other measures to keep drivers on their toes, like an Australian initiative where drivers were hit with double demerit points on some weekends.
Nationally 22,929 infringements were handed out to drivers compared to 7136 last Labour weekend.
The total value of those tickets totalled $1,242,410 compared to $851,350 the year before.
Allan Kirk, CEO of New Zealand Motorcycle Safety Consultants, said the speeding campaign doesn't work because it didn't change driver attitudes.
"It's not easy to drive, our biggest problem is that after we have learned to drive we think that's it. Well, it's not it."
Mr Kirk thought the biggest problem wasn't speeding but driver distraction, although he agreed this was a difficult challenge for the Ministry of Transport to solve.
Asked whether the speeding blitz was for generating revenue, Mr Kirk disagreed. "To be brutally frank they aren't there to make revenue, they just don't know what the hell to do. That's the easy way to do things, give tickets."
Of the tickets issued nationally, 82 per cent came from speed camera and 18 per cent were issued by officers.
