Nelson Weekly Locally Owned and Operated
Tuesday 29 September 2015
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Drivers didn’t get the message
Andrew Board
Nelson drivers didn’t get the message: stop using your cellphone while you drive. At the start of September, police throughout the country started a campaign targeting people using their cellphones while driving. Senior Sergeant John Price says the two week campaign made for disappointing reading in Nelson.
“We were really disappointed, we caught heaps of people using their phones, particularly people who were texting while driving, which is even worse.” John says drivers in and around the city were the biggest culprits. “When they’re going fast people know what can happen if they’re distracted, but when they go slower they seem to think the danger isn’t as great.”
Ministry of Transport data shows that in 2014, ‘diverted attention’ was identified as a contributing factor in a total 1,053 crashes, or 12 per cent of all crashes, which resulted in 22 people being killed and a further 191 sustaining serious injuries. For the past five years, it has been illegal to text or use a mobile phone when driving, even when a car is stationary at traffic lights or in a queue. The penalty for of-
fending is an $80 infringement fee and 20 demerit points. John says police didn’t record exactly how many people were fined, but it was significant. “We didn’t really have any expectation of how many we would catch, but the number we did get was very disappointing. We don’t know why people do it, or speed, or drive drunk, but they do.”
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