End revenue deaths - conquer the RAM

[SMOKEU]

I think the biggest problem you will encounter is the fact that the police still deny there is a revenue quota system in place, they say officers must "make contact" (no pun intended) with X amount of members of the public per day, this does not mean fining them everytime, though we know this is the way they operate.

I have done stupid stuff while drving in front of traffic cops many times before, and I should have lost my licence on the spot and had the car impounded several times over. The worst I got was being told to slow down and a fine for no WOF.

[candor]

What way do you think it should be tackled GW? Or should not be? When the Govt has turned down 3 requests for reviews or Royal Commissions in a short time frame I reckon it's not something to take lying down A lot of research and work (years) went into all the requests. I know Akilla formed like a 100 page document with appendixes, see his releases which he asked me to post here
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1004/S00195.htm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1004/S00084.htm

[Spearfish]

Its going to be a long road
I think politicians will have problems convincing MA'n'PA complacent that their driving skills leave a lot, if not it all, to be desired without voter backlash. They pay their money so they have the right...
I'm not trying to sound defeatist but the current reactionary method of law enforcement is favoured by politicians, how do you become proactive, thereby affecting a larger proportion if not all of New Zealands drivers without getting kicked out of power.
We have become a nation of blame the victim for creating a situation of being a victim rather than the cause of the crime so now we
don't go out after dark
kids cant ride/walk to school because of the boogyman or the dangerous driving
motorbikes are becoming to dangerous for New Zealands driving style...
public toilets get locked along with public parks...
and we lock ourselves into the small footprint of our houses while the crims get the rest to run around in..
And the list goes on and on
If they cant/wont work on the most basic rights of New Zealanders then what pressure does a motoring minority have for change?

[StoneY]

The fines are the way that contacts are measured

I just asked someone who truly knows how the contacts are measured (senior cop himself, supervisory position)
No its NOT on how many tickets they write
It also includes contacts with shoplifters, wife bashers, drug dealers....its not a ROAD policing requirement at all its merely 'you shall talk in pereson to x members of the public every week'
Its taken from thier patrol notebooks

Obviously a dedicated road police officer such as Highway patrol members rarely get to contact anyone other than speeders or drunk drivers, building the myth they have a set quota of tickets to issue


Now lets NOT turn a real statsitical analysis and oppurtunity to make a difference into a 'Cop Bash' thread, we will get noweher with that method or attitude

Edit: And forgive my attrocious spelling, spell check takes time muwahahahahahaha

[Bald Eagle]

Now lets NOT turn a real statsitical analysis and oppurtunity to make a difference into a 'Cop Bash' thread, we will get noweher with that method or attitude

Indeed. The issue to be attacked her is the shonky stats collection methods being used to shape 'policy' If you build on an unsafe data set you will not get a good outcome. The Police are unfortunate 'whipping boys' who have to work with the policies handed down to them from the mountain.

[candor]

Wrong - we have the charts showing that Police are contracted to set hours spent on each of a small range of infringements. In turn these hours have an expected ticket issue rate per hour (Jones 2005 - effective and efficient road policing Trentham Library). Have documented proof. And inside sources who confirm it, but there is a code of silence on this aided by an indoctrination program that says "keep Mum because quotas are about safety - don't think, just do" .

Yep Police are just the faces of the bad policy, they don't write it.

[avgas]

They will stop the anti-quota carnage when the anti-law carnage stops.
So if you really want to fix it stop breaking the law.
Pretty simple math really.

[candor]

The case has been adequately made by the AA and by 4 reviews of the quota system by MoT that the quota carnage exceeds the carnage that would exist without quotas (by about 30 lives a year) - which means the Police are what is behind our high road toll. It may be legal but it's not right. Quota activities are a conflict of interest with road safety once quotas rise over a certain threshold. The opposition powers that be now concede that it is necessary to discover where the overdose threshold lies (several meetings in the Beehive resulted in this).

120 000 learners breaches with high bounties and incentivised chases seem to be upping our youth toll. There are nw more dangerous driving charges than ever thanks to quotas (Police get praise for productivit if convictions rise and chases lead to opportunities for double quota hits - a ticket for speed or alcohol infringement and a dangerous drive conviction). The paradigm creates chaos as it's better to issue two tickets in one hit than one (mor donut time).
Too many checkpoints are causing chases that end in death when the drunk was best not confronted. They also divert resources from areas where the spend would return more life savings. Weird but true States with no checkpoints and drunk quotas have lower drink drive death rates.
A million speeding tickets - not helping one iota.

The math says very clearly the quotas are killing. Or as the AA say "more enforcement leads to more crashes". And the victims are not all quota targets, Police and quota targets playing cowboy harm innocent parties in 10% or so of the casualties. As it is people outside the little greyhound rabbit game that et hurt that makes it everyones business.

[avgas]

The math says very clearly the quotas are killing. Or as the AA say "more enforcement leads to more crashes". And the victims are not all quota targets, Police and quota targets playing cowboy harm innocent parties in 10% or so of the casualties. As it is people outside the little greyhound rabbit game that et hurt that makes it everyones business.

While I completely agree with you. Do you have the figures to back this up.
All arguments have to be validated otherwise they don't count for shit.
how else do you think they got speed cameras into the system?

[CookMySock]

They will stop the anti-quota carnage when the anti-law carnage stops.
So if you really want to fix it stop breaking the law.

This logic is circular. The laws they put in place are about revenue collection - not road safety. They purport to address a problem that is actually a fallacy. The solution proposed will never actually become a solution, so the public is left climbing mountain impossible. In the meanwhile, the government collects substantial moolah until it figures out another wild goose chase to foist on us.

Steve

[candor]

Will once I can scan (back up I mean)

Bearing in mind a Brit Police trainer tells me the training is a joke here "a few hours versus months at home" Goddards report is interesting. It notes a quadrupling of pursuits since the 1990s especially spiking since 2003 when meeting 30 of the NRSC announced a shift to full dependency on the quota software (and my oia shows parallel related trauma);

Goddard report excerpts

Driver training
53. The Police Professional Driver Programme has been progressively implemented since early 2004. As noted above, under the programme, members receive a rating of gold, silver, or bronze depending on their knowledge of pursuit theory and policy.

Police gather data on outcomes of pursuits involving motorcycles to determine whether the risks are greater than those involving other vehicles, and, in turn, to determine whether specific guidance about pursuit of motorcycles is needed in the pursuit policy or training.

Type of vehicle
100. In the Authority’s analysis of 137 pursuits, the pursued vehicles included 116 cars, 18 motorcycles, and three vans. Of the cars, 25 were Subarus, 22 were Nissans, 12 were Holdens and 12 were Mitsubishis.
101. In the NZ Police Review of Pursuits April 2004‐May 2007, more than 81 percent of pursued vehicles were cars, and just over 11 percent were motorcycles. Other vehicles pursued included vans (3 percent), utes (1.5 percent), mopeds (0.4 percent), light trucks
(0.4 percent), quad bikes, heavy trucks, taxis and one mobile home (NZ Police, 2008).
Risks associated with motorcycles
102. For purposes of comparison, at 30 June 2007, New Zealand’s on‐road vehicle fleet comprises just over 3.2 million vehicles of which just under 64,000 (2 percent) are motorcycles (Land Transport New Zealand, 2008). Motorcyclists are, in other words, far more likely than other road users to be involved in pursuits.17
103. Motorcyclists are also involved in a disproportionate number of road crashes.18 This indicates that motorcyclists are, on average, more likely than other road users to take risks and to act in ways that bring themselves to Police attention.
104. It is not possible from the Authority’s sample of 137 pursuits to determine whether it is more dangerous to pursue a motorcycle than another vehicle.19

According to Pursuits: The Case for Change (NZ Police, 2003), just over 60 percent of fleeing drivers in a 1996‐2002 sample had previous convictions.

Police in Victoria, Canada in 2007 adopted a policy restricting pursuits to situations where there were reasonable grounds to believe the driver or passenger of a vehicle “has committed, or is about to commit a serious criminal offence involving the
imminent the threat of grievous bodily harm or death to any person”. The policy explicitly prohibited pursuits when the offence was solely a traffic or property crime.

[candor]

Just replying to myself! I think Goddard did actually find out about MCist trauma but it was too sensitive to include in the report, hence the recommendation Police look into it. It needs to include collateral damage though.

Transport registry can likely give the required breakdowns of the following figures I got awhile ago.

Table 3
Casualties (killed & injured) in ''Evading Enforcement' crashes by road user type, 2002 to 2008
(chases up 2-3x with harm following introduction of resource allocation quota model)

Driver------ Passenger ------ Pedestrian------ Pedal Cyclist
521------------ 269----------- 19 ------------------- 5 ------- --- Total 814

And many victims were not the pursued,

Age----------- Pursued----------------------------not pursued
unknown---------------41-------------------------7
0-14--------------------36--------------------------7
15-19------------------234------------------------27
20-24------------------150-------------------------9
25-39---------------------145-----------------------58
40-59-------------------39--------------------------41
60+---------------------0----------------------------20
Total--------------------------------------------------814

[candor]

Stop wasting bandwith Mu. Re quotas; a little history of who said and did what when, and a link to a slightly out of date web site with pictures - you can always skip reading the below if interested as pictures tell 1000 words.
The RAM http://roadsafety.candor.org.nz/page2.html#Commission
A little report card on how officer did on tickets leaked to media http://roadsafety.candor.org.nz/offences.htm
And another end product of the quota software http://roadsafety.candor.org.nz/risk_targetting.htm

A fruit of the profit or break even model borne out of the passage of the State Sector Act of 1988 was that the 1994 MoT offshoot NZ’s Land Transport Safety Authority, spearheaded introduction of the Supplementary Road Safety Package (SRSP) in October 1995. A budget allocated to enable high apprehensions of drink drivers and speeders. This was the start of the project listed on NZTA website called “to develop and refine a resource allocation model” for Road Policing. In 2002 it’s leader Tony Bliss took up his position at the World Bank.

It was at a doomsday meeting no. 30 held for the NRSC at MoT in November, where Economist Tony Bliss who’d for 8 years worked for LTSA and Treasury on working papers for the RAM (Safety Directions) advised that it was time to apply the formula. The Government (MoT) said it disliked the idea of basing road safety “entirely on the formula” but Bliss said he had confidence in the study and Rob Robinson soon appeared saying the Minister had just signed off on the increased ticketing. Supportive law changes were done like halving the max drink driver disqualification.

Here is the surface rationale for our study in intensive enforcement funding as it's big boy hard sells.
http://io.ssc.govt.nz/pathfinder/doc...cilsJuly03.ppt.

But Police were soon writing paniced letters to the MoT along with othe agencies sworn to secrecy saying they had never had a plain English rendering of what they signed on for and now weren’t happy with the science.Why? Long inquiries by Martin Jenkins of Akilla campaign established the RAM is encapsulated in a mathematical formula located deep in a Departmental or Consultants hard drive which MoT finally handed over, after denying its existence and years of OIA’s. It took ombudsmen involvement and threats to sue to get delivery!

It rigidly directs Police and road safety operations in each Police District using functions from “Fatality number / cost =’s current fatality risk/cost on road segment minus theorized impact of ticket quotas for speed, alcohol, seatbelts, intersection infringements and supportive advertising of such enforcement given expected traffic density.”

Treasury docs had provided clues to its existence in stating “The targets are set using a mathematical model that predicts road safety outcomes. The model is built upon a set of assumptions derived from a wealth of historical crash and roading information. This snapshot of New Zealand road safety is the base from which a set of mathematical functions predict how various interventions and other factors should affect road safety outcomes.” (TREASURY WORKING PAPER 01/05 Outcomes Focussed Management in New Zealand –A Background Paper Chris Ussher and Andrew Kibblewhite

According to a presentation by Inspector Dave Cliff “(Southland) staff were in a 200-2003 trial run assigned a specific number of hours of road policing activity to deliver each month, divided across the strategic projects of drink drive, speed, restraint and visible road safety enforcement (sic intersections). A reasonable expectation of the number of offences detected for each type of hour was also set – and 25% of the >hrly notices were being expected to be in the 11 – 15 km/hour range Effective Road Policing in Rural Areas: An Integrated Approach Presentation Inspector David M Cliff New Zealand Police

So purportedly the ex Chief MoT Economists software could magically forecast the yearly number of fatalities by District, based on the offence ticket targets which initially covered 3 crash factors of 19 possible ones identified as having a toll role. Intersection running was a recent addition.

BUT THEY WERE AND ARE WRONG. 3 SECRET INTERNAL REVIEWS AT MOT SHOWED THAT THE HARDER THE FORMULA IS APPLIED THE HIGHER THE SOCIAL COST OF CRASH TRAUMA GOES!
Atop Govt self appraisals showing failure PhD analyses showed “high visibility/rigid enforcement policies introduced in Dec 2000 (when) the LTSA and police introduced new Highway Patrols with greatly increased resourcing resulted in 11,000 ADDITIONAL injuries and some 50 ADDITIONAL deaths in 3 years, and continues to cause 5000 unnecessary injuries every year (Fast & Safe).

THIS DECLINE ACCELERATED SINCE 2003 AS RISING QUOTAS SAW ACCS CRASH LIABILITIES TRIPLE TO NEAR 7B (Akilla OIA 2009)

Back at the halfway mark in the midst of a major ratchet up of the enforcement program in November 2003, Superintendent Fitzgerald took time out to reassure Police worried about an increasing loss of community respect (in an address in the Police Assn magazine) that Road policing represented 23% of all police business, which meant it now funded 1650 frontline positions and 450 new non-sworn staff.

.An increase of 50% in Police highway patrol hours over 5 years from ’03-2008 occurred in tandem with reduced highway crash costs under 1% as per Police National Progress reports. Highway patrol hours dedicated to ever increasing quotas rose from 200,000 in 2003 to over 350,000 preceding publication. The shocking result has been stasis in fatality trends, a 3% yearly growth in serious injuries + less than a 1% decrease in crash social costs on State Highways (static at 1.6B)

Annette King was forced to admit to media and Parliament after prior denials that “the use of infringement notices and traffic offence notices-performance measures-was first introduced in 1997-98 in line with Treasury guidelines. I also have with me the New Zealand Police road traffic enforcement agreement 1999-2000, and it lists the data that must be provided by each district. The data includes speeding offences detected per hour, drink-driving offences detected per hour, and contacts per hour”.

This particular agreement was signed by(the oppositions)Transport Minister, Maurice Williamson. I am glad I have finally got to the bottom of why districts have been allocating tickets on individual police “I can say that the issue is finally being cleared up. I can tell members that no such performance indicators now exist.” On July 5th 2006 the Police Comm. made public a memo sent to all district commanders, saying it would be permissible for enforcement targets to be set on a district, area or group basis, but those were not to be allocated to individual staff.

However a leaked email from Waitemata road policing Superindendent John Kelly in 2008 said each full-time equivalent highway patrol officer is expected to issue 1420 tickets a year. Mr Kelly repeated denials there was a quota system in response to queries about his email which says officers should write 560 speeding tickets a year, 130 for alcohol-related offences, 110 for restraint offences (mainly seatbelts and carseats), 220 for dangerous and careless driving and 400 for high-risk driving.

A spokesman for Police Minister Annette King then fronted to say that she maintained the line she took two years ago when she said that she “didn't support” quotas. Yet she was powerless to change things. Last year a road safety coordinator was stoppe in the rain and they attempted to ticket her for too slow. She said I’m drtiving to the conditions. The Officer said he could not get back to the station until he issued one more s please take it.

The RAM resource allocation model (MoT) sets ticket levels in Police Districts, and remains referenced with it’s companion manual “LTSA Safety Directions” by the National Land Transport Funding Document. It dictates funding shares to the 12 Police Districts of around 1,5340M from fuel taxes and vehicle registrations and a contribution from the State Accident insurer to the National Road Policing program and funds the supportive publicity campaign to legitimize enforcement campaigns. The RAM working papers “safety directions” are listed on many key documents as still providing the strategic framework for road safety.

There was a 27% funding increase to Police & LTNZ midst the revenue windfall early 2000’s - revenue was up to at least 1B by 2006 from quotas of approx.30,000 intersection fines, 25,000 drink drive and 750,000 speed tickets. As a third of tickets aren’t paid and Road Policing costs 3B it is not a revenue neutral set up, as required under the Public Finance Act.

It’s both an economic and safety failure. Members of the NRSC are oddly compelled to sign secrecy agreements about what they hear about the high level strategy, which places the Local Govt rep in breach of local Govt laws, requiring public consultation. Funny that disclosure is no problem elsewhere just not in NZ. The study has been reported back to the World Bank and the part funder the European Commission since 2002. My big Q is who owns the intellectual rights to the formula software - what dunce?

[shrub]

Sadly it's all rather futile. The media campaign to turn speed into a social demon has been very effective and most people genuinely believe the MOT position, and if they attempted to change the status quo there would be an uproar.

People believe what they're told to believe.

[MSTRS:Me]

Sadly it's all rather futile. The media campaign to turn speed into a social demon has been very effective and most people genuinely believe the MOT position, and if they attempted to change the status quo there would be an uproar.

People believe what they're told to believe.

So, just start telling them something different.
These people have a responsibility to correct some of what they've been forcing on us all.