By Dan Parker
Police have backed away from an idea to permanently reduce the tolerance for speeding to four kilometres an hour.
The stricter conditions which are used during holiday periods will however remain in force until the end of the month.
Until the end of February police will be keeping an extra close eye on motorists.
But no matter how close you keep your eye on your speedometer you could inadvertently be breaking the law and it could be down to something as simple as having the wrong size tyres on you car.
Tyre store owner Dave Hadley says it is all to do with the revolution of the tyre affecting the speedo.
“If it’s a large tyre it's taking longer to go around, therefore the speedo is not registering correctly and it will just register the amount of revolutions,” he says. “If it's a higher or a lower tyre it will go out."
Mr Hadley says a five percent increase or decrease in the height of a new set of tyres could alter your speedo reading by four kilometres an hour.
The Automobile Association’s Mike Noon says speedos are so unreliable it would rather see the road safety focus go on improving roads rather than improving revenue.
“The AA has called for a $150 million dollars to be spent improving simple road safety initiatives like rumble strip, wire rope barriers, filling in ditches, removing poles,” he says. “The estimate is if we do that for ten years we will save eight lives a year, every year.”
Police today were out using their cameras but were not keen to appear on ours. In a statement to 3 News they said:
"The current speed tolerance reduction applies for the month of February and public holidays only.
"There is no consideration of making this a permanent reduced tolerance.”
Clive Matthew-Wilson says the police were very quick to take credit when the road toll lowered over a holiday period.
“But then when it went up by 50 percent over Christmas they then blamed the drivers. They can’t have it both ways.
“If the sort of enforcement works the road toll would go down and stay down but it didn’t.”
Excess speed is attributed to a third of all fatal accidents every year.
3 News