Visitors to New Zealand inevitably hire a car that will be left overnight parked in the open in the carpark provided by your chosen accommodation provider. No problem here except when you awake to find winter frosts. This simply requires that you splash some water on the front windscreen to melt the ice to enable you to clear your vision. You then drive off on your merry way to be later stopped by the local police in their many winter morning road blocks. You will find to your great displeasure that you may be issued with an infringement fine for not fully de-icing all windows. If you have thoroughly removed the ice from all windows you may still find the over-zealous officer issuing a fine for forgetting to do the rear vision mirrors.
I witness this regularly in the small towns in the South Island of New Zealand. The locals wise up to the window ice road blocks but the visitors get caught day after day. No need for a visitor bed tax when the NZ Police are collecting revenue from tourists.
Although impaired visibility due to iced up car windows clearly is a safety hazard, it is the level of impaired that is the questionable factor.
It all boils down to policing to population ratios. The NZ Police currently has a ratio of one police officer for about every 510 people. That is not a lot in comparison to England who have a police to population ratio of 1 to 375 and Australia on average that has ratio of 1 to 415. Police resources are allocated based on population size and not on crime percentage per population.
Now in some small towns located in the North Island the crime rate can be extremely high. Police have their hands full chasing real criminals. On the other hand some towns in the South Island have crime that is in the magnitude of stolen bicycles, under age drinkers and frosted up windows. Basically they have little to do but enforce the minor infringements.
When in the South Island don’t drive over 54km per hour in built up areas. Put your seat belt on before you start the ignition and not as you leave the parking bay. Don’t overindulge in alcohol the previous night as you may find that you are still a few milligrams over the limit the next morning.
Tags: Traffic infringements
After going up and down on the unsealed road to Turoa Ski field, I got stopped for having a dusty back window and unclear rear number plate. No ticket but lots of attitude.