Hawke's Bay, New Zealand speed cameras issued 20,247 tickets worth at least NZD $3,000,000 in 2004. The heavy use of automated enforcement devices, however, has done nothing to reduce the number of deaths on the roads in the Central North Island region, as the Hawke's Bay traffic fatality rate is now higher than it has been since 1997. Two-thirds of speed camera tickets that were issued to the area's 350 police officers were canceled.

An arbitrary limit allows sloppy policing. Officers don't have to determine if there has been dangerous driving, as they just ticket everyone. But the policy alienates huge segments of the public who, a generation ago, would have been the police's greatest allies.