R: Speeding police vehicles in New Zealand by speed band

police_speeding_band {nzpullover}

R Documentation

Speeding police vehicles in New Zealand by speed band

Description

A dataset containing speeding vehicle detections (by cameras) and the speed band of vehicles registered to Police 2009 and 2017.

Usage

police_speeding_band

Format

A data frame with 1673 rows and 6 variables:

value: Number of speeding vehicle detections
series: The thing being counted by value
district: Police district
area: Police area (subdivision of district)
speed: Speed in km/h over the limit (the limit is not given)
year: Year of the event

Details

General notes and caveats by the New Zealand Police:

This data contains provisional data which is drawn from a dynamic operational database. This is subject to change as new information is recorded or recoded.

The data does not include cancelled infringements and proceedings, but does include minor infringements cleared as Written Traffic Warnings (WTWs) since the adoption of Police's Written Traffic Warning Policy in 2014. As WTWs do not have a fee these are not included in monetary value tables.

Police speeding data includes only speed camera detections of vehicles registered to Police that were exceeding the speed limit. The data does not include driver occupation or whether the vehicle was being driven while on Police duty; however it could be reasonably presumed that staff were on duty in the vast majority of cases. Only in special circumstances are contract vehicles and patrol vehicles permitted to be driven whilst off duty. Police does not maintain a database of officers issued with speeding fines while driving Police vehicles. The table containing waived Police speed offences is a subset of the numbers shown in the top table and include all waived reasons. Specific reasons cannot be determined without review of individual files. However, a notice is generally only waived when a Police officer is undertaking urgent duty driving in response to an incident. Police employees who travel in excess of the speed limit are treated no differently to members of the public, and depending on the circumstances may be subject to further disciplinary action. All drivers of police vehicles detected travelling in excess of the speed limit are liable for the relevant penalties unless a legal defence applies. The Land Transport (Road User) Rule 2004 lists the legal defences Police have when undertaking urgent duty driving, thereby outlining the criteria for waiving a notice.

Please note that Police vehicle speeding data from 2014 onward cannot be compared to previous years due to a change in the way the infringements are recorded. A change to the recording process means that there has been an increase in the number of infringements recorded for 2014 when compared to previous years. This is due to a change of process for speed camera photos of police vehicles with red and blue flashing lights visible in the photographs. Notices are now issued for many of these photos, pending an explanation from the driver rather the previous process of presuming an urgent duty driving defence and not issuing a notice. "

Most speed cameras employ radar technology to detect speeding vehicles. The process of issuing a speed camera notice involves verification of the resulting vehicle photo to validate the detection. When counting all vehicles passing speed cameras (i.e., all moving vehicles complying with the speed limit and otherwise), a small number of detections may involve other causes. These cannot be reliably excluded from the total number of detected vehicles as Police record speed camera notice details separately from raw vehicle counts. The total number of vehicles detected by speed cameras on deployment may therefore include a small number of false radar detections. Note also that this data starts from August 2009 as there were some technical issues affecting the rollout of digital mobile cameras primarily between January and July 2009.

Source