“Penalties need to be accompanied by high and sustained enforcement to have maximum impact, as well as being perceived as fair and legitimate.”

Skinner said some speeding was due to driver error or inattention, but some decisions to speed were intentional.

“For these people, the size of the penalty and their perception of getting caught can influence whether they speed. We know that appropriate penalties can provide an effective deterrent for many people.”

University of Auckland professor Alistair Woodward, who considers speeding a public health issue, said it seemed “ridiculous” infringements hadn’t increased since the turn of the century.

“I don't know of anything else that’s immune to inflation,” Woodward said.

“Making dangerous behaviour expensive is one of the levers that we've got when we’re trying to make the road safe.

“But if a speeding fine hasn't changed for 20 years, then that suggests that it's really not likely to have the same effect that it had in 1999.”

Should we raise demerit points, or introduce proportionate speeding fines?

Crash analyst and road safety advocate Bruce Wilson, who spent 16 years in road policing, says he’s not against speeding fine increases, but there are better tools in the ministry's arsenal.

Wilson used to write 30,000 tickets a month and said he and fellow officers used to be “abused quite heavily” and accused of "revenue gathering" by frustrated motorists.

"Personally for me, I think demerit points for speeding should increase because that's a far more effective tool for police – people need their driver’s licences."

Fines from speed cameras do not result in demerit points, an option that should be considered, Wilson said.

“I'm not picking on the trucking industry here, but at the moment they can speed and pay the fine and they might gain half an hour or an hour of productivity for doing it, so the fine actually doesn't affect them.

“I know police did look into it when I was there, but it was a big administration thing to prove who the driver was. But I think it is something to look at.”

"Implementing a system like this in New Zealand would require significant change."

Wilson said if the ministry did raise speeding fines, it could also look to Norway as a leader, where police issue fines that are proportionate to the size of the speeder's wage or salary.

This would mean younger and lower socioeconomic groups were not hit the hardest by fine increases, he said.

For what it’s worth, it doesn’t appear Te Manatū Waka wants to go down this path.

Skinner said as part of the review the ministry "may" explore options for linking fines to income.

"Many countries with systems where fines are proportional to income have different privacy and information sharing arrangements regarding income," Skinner said.

"Implementing a system like this in New Zealand would require significant change."

But the ministry does appear more open to a re-evaluation of demerit points for speeding.

Skinner said the evidence seen by the ministry indicates a mix of demerits and financial penalties were the "most effective" at disincentivising high risk behaviour on the roads.

"We want to do everything we can to reduce high risk behaviours like speeding on our roads, and as part of this we plan to consult on some changes to the demerits system."

Police Association president Chris Cahill said police had long held concerns about how fines were often the entry point to the criminal justice system for “a hell of a lot of people, especially young people”.

While the idea of raising fines, and in particular demerits, for speeding had merit, the potential effects of it needed to be considered, he said.

“But the key thing for me is that what really works is not the level of the fine, but actually the idea that you're going to be caught.”

Cahill said a Ministry of Transport report released in January had found the police were failing to deliver on the amount of road policing they need to be doing.

“And if you don't see police on the road, you're not worried about the fine because you know you're not going to get one.

“The biggest change I think we need to see is police on the road.”