In brief:

Publicly available crash data suggests the wider Coatesville-Riverhead corridor became safer after the 2020 speed limit cut, with fatalities and serious crashes down.

But the Coatesville fixed camera also became a major fine generator almost immediately.

OIA data obtained by Centrist shows 120,612 tickets were issued between July 2020 and July 2024, with 71.2% going to drivers travelling 15km/h or less over the limit.

Safety gains, then a fine surge

The wider Coatesville-Riverhead corridor appears to have become safer after the 2020 speed limit reduction, with fatalities and serious crashes down in the years that followed. But the fixed camera also quickly became a powerful fine-generating machine after the lower limit took effect.

Across the wider Coatesville-Riverhead corridor, publicly available crash data shows four fatalities in the decade before the 2020 speed limit reduction and one fatality in the four years from 2021 to 2024 after the lower limit took effect. The numbers are small, so that does not prove the lower limit caused the drop, but certainly it may have contributed.

However, Official Information Act requests obtained by Centrist have uncovered the scale of the fine surge that followed at the Coatesville-Riverhead Highway fixed speed camera, where the trip wire was set low enough that most of the tickets issued are to drivers travelling in the lower speeding bands rather than to the most extreme offenders…the ones more likely to be causing accidents.

The Coatesville camera has become one of the country’s most contentious, branded a “revenue collector” by critics and even cut down earlier this year in what Police described as a suspected act of vandalism.

In March 2020, the last active month before the camera went offline, it generated $20,110 in face-value fines.

By July 2020, after the camera resumed operation and the speed limit was reduced from 80km/h to 60km/h, that figure had risen to $881,620 in a single month.

That is an almost 44-fold increase, or close to 4,300%.

The July figures show how quickly the change took effect:

5,292 tickets were issued to drivers travelling 11 to 15km/h over the limit
2,147 were issued for 16 to 20km/h over
1,012 were issued for speeds above 20km/h

That is more than 8,400 tickets in a single month, before fully accounting for lower-level infringements.

Between July 2020 and July 2024, the period covered by the OIA, the camera issued 120,612 tickets. Of those, 65,051, or 53.9%, were for drivers travelling 11 to 15km/h over the limit. Another 20,874, or 17.3%, were for drivers travelling 10km/h or less over. In total, 85,925 tickets, or 71.2%, were issued to drivers travelling 15km/h or less above the limit. Only a small minority were for speeds above 20km/h.

Through late 2020 and into 2021, the camera repeatedly generated high six-figure monthly totals, with thousands of drivers ticketed month after month. The volumes fluctuated, but the underlying pattern held. Most of the infringements were in the 6 to 15km/h over range.

Crash data shows fewer than 10 fatal incidents on or around Coatesville-Riverhead Highway over more than two decades, while the fixed speed camera has issued more than 120,000 tickets in just four years.

Was the camera site even a major part of the risk picture before the limit was cut?

An analysis of the data suggests the immediate vicinity of the Coatesville fixed camera was not a high-risk area before the speed limit was lowered.

In the decade before the 2020 change, the camera-area slice recorded relatively few crashes and no fatalities, with most incidents non-injury or minor.

While ‘excessive speed’ in New Zealand generally refers to driving 40km/h or more above the limit, most Coatesville camera tickets were issued to drivers far below that level.

The broader road may have benefited from lower speeds. But the camera’s enforcement pattern still raises a fair question about proportionality, placement, and purpose. It may have been safety-motivated at the start, but is it now still about safety or money?

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