The International Road Policing Organisation (RoadPol) is a project of the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF).
Contents
Creation
Road-pol is headquartered in Wellington NZ, and is currently led by New Zealand's ex-Police Commissioner Rob Robinson. He convinced the Police Minister George Hawkins to switch to a road policing system based entirely on a formula contained within police tasking software developed at the Land Transport New Zealand research facility with the aid of the ex-strategy director Tony Bliss. Bliss is now principal lender at the World Bank to countries accepting Roadpol mentoring, under restrictive loan conditions that require compliance with the formula.
Effects
RoadPol predicted regional road tolls based upon quotas for speed, drink driving and seatbelt tickets. The formula was able to raise 1 billion in fines revenue, but it resulted in the doubling of costs of serious injury and death on NZ roads and in NZs road safety levels plummeting to the bottom of the OECD. The Akilla Sleep Safety Foundation obtained documents from the Ministry of Transport, which was initially reluctant to adopt the formula described as high risk by Mr Bliss, who nevertheless maintained he "stood by the study". These documents evidenced that 3 reviews of the formula by the Ministry of Transport in 2005 showed that as the dose of quotas increases, so does road trauma. However the chief researcher Dr Guria advised the Agency to "try and believe it works".
The Candor Trust connected this inverse relation of the speed and alcohol based formula, to road safety levels, to an increase in Police pursuits. Justice Lowell Goddard then undertook a review of Police chase culture at the request of the Labour Government, finding the increase did indeed jeopardise young persons, and recommended more caution. The Akilla Sleep Safety Foundation had uncovered a document revealing that attached to the NZ quota study was a propaganda policy called "Greatest Enforceable Risk" which was an Land Transport NZ Policy that signatories to the National Road Safety Committee had to suppress risks other than those within the formula.
The New Zealand AA has submitted to the Government that New Zealands poor road safety performance is due to misplaced overemphasis on speed and alcohol when emergent risks are now more significant (Saving Ourselves publication, submissions to 2020 plan consultation). It appears though that no deviation from the current program formula is permitted, because the New Zealand study is being reported back to the Global Road Safety Partnership, and was tagged to be an exemplar for second world countries.