Western Bay of Plenty road policing manager senior sergeant Ian Campion is expecting a reduction in the number of crashes at intersections with the introduction of the new road rule as motorists travel with more caution.

NZ Transport Agency statistics released today show on average there is two intersection crashes on Bay of Plenty roads each day.

Western Bay of Plenty road policing manager senior sergeant Ian Campion is expecting drivers to be more cautious at intersections.

A total of 4390 crashes were recorded in the Bay of Plenty between 2006 and 2010. On average or 878 a year, 16.9 per week and 2.4 a day.

Ian believes there will be an initial reduction in the number of crashes during the first few weeks, but says it's hard to predict what will happen until the changes are made.

'If you look at the evidence in Australia when they changed the rules, initially drivers were particularly cautious and they made allowances for each other and I think we can pretty much expect the same here.

'People will be over cautious and will be considerate and those who are a little unsure are quite likely to be over cautious. That's a good thing.”

Ian says in order to understand crashes at intersections people need to look at the cause of intersection crashes.

'There's a whole raft of reasons why they occur and that's in-attention, misjudgement, poor gap selection.

'Blatant red light running, which is a serious problem in Tauranga, and so there are a whole raft of reasons, apart from the giving way rules, that crashes occur at intersections.”

He says police will be taking a soft approach to people who breach the give way rule, but he says that doesn't mean there is a 'lead in amnesty or anything.”

'We'll exercise discretion and accept that there will be some people that can't quite interpret the rule changes. We have those now anyway.”

Ian says the best thing for people to do is visit the NZTA website and make sure they know the new rules.

'Whilst there has been a whole load of education in all forms of media, people need to brush up on that.

'Go onto the NZTA website, there is an interactive quiz people can do and read up on the road code. Take the time to brush up on all the road rules.”

From 2006 to 2010 there were 16,250 crashes at intersections on average nationwide each year with an average of 312 crashes per week or 45 crashes per day.

This equates to one crash at an intersection every 30 minutes.