Labour calls for more traffic officers

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 6

Labour calls for more traffic officers

I pi Wellington I • I I The Labour Party wants | urgent steps taken to m- , ’crease the number of traffic j ■ officers—in line with the < ! proposed tougher laws on j ’drinking and driving. i The Labour spokesman on ; transport, Sir Basil Arthur I l(Timaru), a member of the ’ I Road Safety Committee, said I 'the Opposition was in com- i iplete agreement with the I ’committee’s general aims > ’against drinking drivers. ’ “I see this report as the labsolute minimum we should I do to improve road safety ' in New Zealand,” he said. ’ Urging the Government to take urgent steps to increase the number of traffic officers and trainee officers, Sir Basil i said in Parliament yesterday that he was prepared to’ move that the Road Safety;’ ; Committee go into recess unI fess this, w’as done. Mr F. L. Rogers (Lab., One- 1 ;hunga), a member of the J committee, advocated lower- 1 ling the blood-alcohol limit to : 60mg. rather than 80mg as recommended by the commitMr J. L. Lithgow (Nat., ’ Palmerston North) said there -was a need to look closer at ■ driver training schools as a way of reducing the road toll. Possibly, he said, young or ■ new drivers should be I aiiowed to drive only smaller, i less powerful vehicles. The charge for a first licence -should be $25, the extra ; money to go to driving • schools. The committee’s chairman ’(Mr M. J. Minogue) denied that the committee had been , moving towards random breath testing—as was sugIgested earlier in the debate

by the Prime Minister (Mr; Muldoon). It had never been any- i where near recommending ’ it, because it had been con- - scious all the time of the} futility of widespread test- ’ ing at random, he said. Mr Minogue said, however,; that the powers of detention ■ would be strengthened under l the committee’s proposals,! and would give rise to a situ-1 ation in which enforcement officers would not feel too inhibited by technicalities. |