Recently I drove over 3000 km in the US. One thing that stood out to me was the number (or rather lack there of compared to NZ) of highway patrol vehicles. We would have lucky to see one highway patrol per 500 km.
I also noticed a similar thing in Australia last year where their police presence on the highways was far far lower than we have here.
Also while there were plenty of signs warning of radar speed traps we never saw any. The norm seemed to be that 10 mph (16 kph) over the limit was quite acceptable, in fact unless you did that speed you were in danger of holding up the traffic flow. Remember some limits were up to 75 mph (120 kph),
This all made me think about how things are here in New Zealand. We certainly seem to be very highly policed on our roads here and our speed limits are very rigidly enforced compared to some other parts of the world.
Are we being "over policed" on our roads? Could these rescouces be better utilised?