Dylan Thomsen: AA Road Safety Spokesperson on the implementation of roadside drug tests

AA believes it'll be difficult to conduct the new roadside drug tests at the same volume as alcohol tests. 

From December, Police across Wellington can do random roadside saliva tests – screening for cannabis, methamphetamine, MDMA, and cocaine.  

The rollout will begin throughout the rest of the country from April. 

Drivers testing positive will need to do a second test that checks for 25 substances.  

AA Road Safety Spokesperson Dylan Thomsen told Ryan Bridge the test takes three to five minutes to complete. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New roadside drug testing is coming. Starts in Wellington next
month everywhere from April next year saliva tests. This is
for cannabis, meth, MDMA, ecstasy, that sort of stuff. Dylan
Thompson is our Road Safety joining us this morning. Dylan,
good morning, Good morning, Ryan. Hey, this is going to
make things safer.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Absolutely in our view, we think this has been something
that New Zealanders needed for a lot of years. We
have had about one hundred road death a year in
recent times where subsequent tests have found drugs in the
driver's system that were deemed to have likely played a
role in the crash. So we're finally about to sort

(00:41):
of catch up and start to have some decent enforcement
tools to try and stop this.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Okay, so that was going to be my next question.
So they likely played a role in the crash, So
thirty percent of crashes they had drugs in their system,
not just that they also likely caused the crash.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, I would change that so lightly and say that
they played a role in the crash. So the crash
investigations are done and a blood test gets done in
a lab and it finds because not every driver involved
in a fatal crash has their bloods tested for drugs.
So it's a situation where the police officers investigating have thought,

(01:21):
we would like to do a blood test and then
they deem that we think that the drugs likely played
a role in causing the crash.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
And can they tell because I think what the some
of the concerns have been about this is about the
level of So is someone impaired by drugs or do
they just have them in their system? You know what
I'm saying?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, and that is trickier than alcohol without a doubt.
The tests that are being introduced in New Zealand, so
the saliva tests are designed to try and detect recent
use and so that is somebody has likely to have
used one of those four drugs that are going to

(02:03):
be tested for at the roadside within a couple of
hours of getting in the car. That's that's the way
they're designed to work and pick things up.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
And what about the because I note that they said
it would take five minutes per car, is this going
to be rolled out like breathalyzer tests? And is that
you know, is everyone going to be waiting in a
line for four hours if they do this or is
it just on a one on you a one off
basis that they see a car and then they pull
it over and do that.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
The way it's going to work is what the law
now allows is police have the ability to test any
driver for drugs if they want to. But the way
it's going to go in reality is we're not going
to see drug testing done in the same volume, the
same scale as the alcohol tests the way it's normally
done overseas as an alcohol test has done first, because

(02:54):
that's pretty quick and if that comes back negative, but
a police officer says the striver's behavior is making me
think that they may be under the influence of something,
then they can ask that person to pull over to
the side of the road somewhere and go to a
drug test, which the first one normally would be done
in sort of three to five minutes.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Dylant, appreciate your time this morning. Dyan Thompson from AA
For more.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
From Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Listen live to News Talks it'd be from five am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.