Independent research into the police's recent summer road safety campaign shows the vast majority of road uses find it easy to understand.

Research into the police's national summer road safety campaign show the majority of the public support the initiative.

Following the successful Safer Summer campaign from December 2013 to January 2014, which featured a two month 4km/h reduced speed threshold and saw the lowest-ever number of road deaths, police repeated the campaign in 2014/15, with a strong focus on speeding and other high-risk driving behaviours.

'In an effort to steer the public conversation away from a customary focus on 'speed tolerance', the 2014/15 campaign messaging was changed to remind drivers of the safety benefits of driving at, or below posted speed limits,” says response and operations deputy commissioner Mike Clement.

'But we acknowledge that in doing so, this generated some criticism that police was changing its planned enforcement approach with some reported confusion around what speed thresholds were being enforced.”

Mike says operationally the police approach was no different than the previous year.

In response to the criticism, police undertook a review of messaging and contracted an independent research company in February 2015 to evaluate the effectiveness and clarity of the campaign.

The research sampled 501 New Zealand road users who used a range of transport modes and was weighted by age, gender and ethnicity to reflect the population.

The maximum margin of error at 95 per cent confidence was +/-4.4 per cent.

'What is pleasing is overall, the research found a high level of support for the police's continued focus on speed enforcement and a low level of confusion about the campaign's enforcement message,” says Mike.

'The research also shows the majority of New Zealand road users adjusted their driving behaviour accordingly, with widespread public support for continued enforcement of speed limits.”

Mike adds: 'This research data has been valuable in helping us assess what worked and what didn't, which will help inform future road safety campaigns.”

Key findings of the research include:

*62 per cent of New Zealand road users said they had made a positive change to their driving behaviour during the campaign.

*The majority of NZ road users (64 per cent) said the campaign messaging was clear, compared to 10% who said it was confusing.

(The remainder were neutral).

*Road users were asked to rate the campaign against a range of criteria.

*The highest rating criteria was that the campaign was 'easy to understand' (67 per cent), followed by 64 per cent who believed it was 'clear'.

*Research showed public support for Police stopping and ticketing drivers exceeding speed limits.

*Seventy-one percent of NZ road users believe speeds of up to 110km/h on the open road should be ticketed, and 79 per cent believe speeds of up to 60km/h in towns and cities should be ticketed.

'While the research results are encouraging, police is very conscious of the need to bring the public along with us during our future campaigns,” adds Mike.

'We need to be very clear in our public messaging and I can assure the public that this will be the case.”

Despite some commentary at the time, Mike says the police's approach would see large numbers of motorists ticketed for slight breaches of speed limits, this had not occurred.

'While police issued an expected higher number of speed camera infringements over the two month period for those caught exceeding speed limits by 5km/h or more, only 33 tickets were issued by police officers to motorists travelling at between 1-4km/h over the speed limit.

'This shows that staff are continuing to use their discretion appropriately.”

Although more detailed analysis would be required to determine the operational impact of police's enforcement campaign on reducing road trauma over the 2014/2015 summer period, Mike says it is extremely heartening that there had been a second consecutive record low number of road deaths for the period.

'It shows that the approach taken by Police and road safety agencies through the Safer Journeys strategy, which focuses on ensuring safer road use, safer vehicles, safe speeds, and safer roads and roadsides, is heading in the right direction in continuing to reduce road trauma.”