Don’t try to beat the lights | Canterbury News | Local News in Canterbury

Drivers who run yellow and red lights will be feeling the heat from police in coming weeks.

Police are planning to put a strong focus on ticketing drivers who try to beat the lights, as the number of intersection crashes in the district for the past five years nears 10,000.

Canterbury Road Policing Manager Inspector Al Stewart said yesterday that police operations would be carried out across the city in a bid to get the number of crashes at intersections down.

He said almost half of Canterbury's crashes occurred at intersections and roundabouts.

"We are still seeing far too many drivers 'charging' into traffic light- controlled intersections and roundabouts. Instead of slowing in case they need to stop, they accelerate to get through an orange light, or to squeeze through a gap at roundabouts," he said.

"This sort of driving simply results in crashes, and the faster the vehicle is going, the more serious the crash is likely to be."

The focus comes as the police union is embroiled in a dispute over a ticket issued to a police constable for running a yellow light while she was off-duty.

The constable is refusing to pay, and the Police Association is paying for top legal advice to help her defend it - a move rank and file police have objected to.

Inspector Stewart said any red light runner only had to get it wrong once to cause "a lot of grief."

"Any time you were trying to save by going faster will seem pretty insignificant as you stand on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck, or worse, an ambulance," he said.

Sergeant Pete Daly said his traffic team had issued 1008 tickets for people running yellow lights since October 2008.

He said police were "every day" seeing drivers accelerating into an intersection on a yellow light, when they could safely stop.

"The rules say if you can stop, you have to," he said.

The city council this week also launched its stopping distance campaign, urging drivers to reduce their speed in urban areas.

City council business support manager Sarah Numan said about 100 people were injured or killed on city roads due to speeding each year.

"If you hit a pedestrian at 70 km/h there is a 95% chance they will be killed, at 60 km/h there is a 70% chance and this lowers to 40% at 50km/h," she said.