‘I was just turning it on’
Caught red-handed sitting at a red light punching fingers at a phone screen, a driver still tried her luck at getting out of a ticket.
‘‘I was just turning it on,’’ she pleads, but her excuse falls on deaf ears as the unmarked police car sitting next to her has a different view.
While typing into her screen for about 30 seconds she missed the unmarked car’s three occupants staring straight through her window into her car, revealing just how distracting a cellphone can be.
The mix of excuses came thick and fast on Wednesday afternoon as one of the members of Waikato’s newly created Project Phantom hit the streets, targeting cellphone use and seatbelt wearing.
People tried every trick in the book to get out of receiving a fine for their use of a cellphone or not wearing a seatbelt, with only one person pulled over honestly admitting their mistake.
‘‘It’s a bad habit I’ve got into,’’ he said, about not having his
seatbelt on.
Reaching for a packet of biscuits was another reason a passenger said they had taken their belt off, while others tried to argue they actually did have it on.
But the worst behaviour Project Phantom has picked up so far was a person watching a movie on YouTube while driving on the Waikato Expressway at night.
Project Phantom kicked off two months ago, with the twoman squad roaming the district in an unmarked car.
It’s a Waikato-specific project, created due to the number of people involved in crashes in which distraction was a factor, or where the outcome would have been different if they were wearing a seatbelt.
Acting Senior Sergeant Vic Sneddon is well aware of those who might have survived if they had just buckled up.
Every Monday morning he receives the fatal crash reports from the Ministry of Transport and, again and again, sees the word no-one wants to see. Ejected.
This means a person has died after being thrown from a vehicle due to not wearing a seatbelt.
‘‘So many of our fatal crashes are completely survivable crash
events becoming unsurvivable because you aren’t meant to be spat out through windows,’’ Sneddon said.
He recalled a crash near Huntly when both the passenger and the driver were not wearing seatbelts and went out through the window, under the car.
Cellphone use was just as bad, with data showing using a cellphone could be as dangerous as someone driving at around the drink-driving limit.
An example Sneddon liked to use was that you wouldn’t text at rugby practice, and you don’t see top netball players taking their phones out on the court, because it’s distracting.
In his road policing role, Sneddon said he had heard a lot of excuses too. One woman he caught hammering away on her phone told him she was responding to a Facebook post – while 300 metres away from her house.
During a NZ Sevens weekend in Hamilton, Sneddon said he saw someone with his head looking into his lap for roughly eight seconds on Norton Rd.
When he pulled him over, the man told him he had won a Facebook auction and was organising pickup details.
‘‘Norton Rd is a busy road [and he was making] just useless and pointless actions while driving, not giving it the attention driving deserves.’’
Ministry of Transport data shows that 19 people have died on the roads in the Waikato police district for the year to date.
A seatbelt fine is $150 with no demerits, with the cellphone fine increasing from $80 to $150 recently, carrying 20 demerit points with it.