Keep to 110kmh, speedsters warned
Motorists caught gassing it along the Waikato Expressway at even a kilometre over the new 110kmh speed limit could be pinged.
Police say they will treating the new speed limits as a maximum.
From Monday, the speed limit along the Cambridge section of the expressway between the Cambridge Southern and Tamahere interchanges will increase to 110kmh.
The road is one of two selected to have the limit upped by 10kmh in what is a New Zealand first.
The other road is the Tauranga Eastern Link Toll Road.
Waikato Road Policing Manager Inspector Marcus Lynam said 110kmh is ‘‘not a target’’.
It is the maximum speed a driver can travel in ideal conditions.
‘‘Staff can give a ticket to someone doing one kilometre over the speed limit, if under the circumstances it’s not ideal conditions or it’s unsafe.
‘‘But we need to be reasonable in our enforcement and that’s important.’’
Speed thresholds - the extra speed allowed above the indicated limit - were a misconception, he said.
‘‘Staff use their discretion and if they see unsafe behaviour, which may be exceeding the speed limit, they can stop the vehicle and take action.
‘‘That may be a ticket, it may be a warning, but we don’t have thresholds where specific staff take action at a speed limit.
‘‘The threshold is the speed limit - 110kmh on that road or
100kmh on the highway.’’ Only fixed and mobile speed cameras had to be set to a certain speed tolerance.
Over the holiday period - 6am on December 18 to 6am on January
8 - the speed camera tolerance would be 4kmh over the limit, National Road Policing Manager Superintendent Steve Greally said.
‘‘If you’re detected by a safe speed camera exceeding the area’s posted speed limit by more than
4km, you are highly likely to be ticketed,’’ Greally said.
‘‘Our officers will still have discretion in how they deal with incidents and how they are enforced.
‘‘Their focus will be on preventing harm on our roads, because we want you here for Christmas.’’
The biggest risk area in terms of crashes is not along the 110kmh expressway section, Lynam said, but south of Cambridge, where the expressway joins State Highway 1 near Karapiro.
‘‘We will be deploying additional staff in that area because that’s the risk area - where people come off the expressway back on to State Highway 1 to Piarere.
‘‘That’s where we urge motorists to take extreme care, where people aren’t protected like they are on those higher standards of road where it’s 110kmh.
‘‘If there’s a crash on the 110km stretch, there is less likely to be serious injury or death because of the way the road is engineered.’’
Signs had been erected to remind motorists of the approaching reduced speed limit.
Both the expressway and the TEL toll road had been designed and engineered to safely support 110kmh travel speeds, NZTA spokesman Harry Wilson said when announcing the speed limit change. Both include such safety features as median barriers, no crossing roads, no tight curves and two lanes in each direction.
The decision to increase speeds followed a detailed consultation period in which NZTA received almost 11,500 submissions.