New Zealand Police have apologised to "any persons of Irish descent" after mistakenly assuming a man whose kayak was tied sideways to the roof of his car was an "Irish tourist".
Waikato district road policing manager Freda Grace said in a statement yesterday that a "visitor from Ireland" had been stopped on a highway on the Coromandel Peninsula on the North Island on Sunday afternoon.
The kayak was "tied crossways across the roof", which could easily have caused a crash, she said in the statement, titled 'What were you thinking? Police ask Irish tourist'.
“Regardless that this is a busy, winding rural road already subject to busier than usual traffic flows over the summer, the driver was unrepentant telling the officer that stopped him that if he secured the kayak long-ways as he is supposed to it would cause damage to the roof of his car.”
Jonathan Waters, a man from Auckland in New Zealand, later claimed to be the driver in question.
"So apparently I am an Irish tourist who decided that tying my kayak onto the car sideways was the plan A of the day. Good old Kiwi cops and their direct quotes of immense untruthfulness," he wrote on his Facebook page.
“And no mention of the twisted metal that was the roof racks, nor the storm that caused it. Sigh.”
Mr Waters told the Waikato Times that the kayak had been tied correctly, but swung sideways in the strong wind. He had pulled over to the side of the road to fix it when the police car stopped.
In a statement reported in the Waikato Times today, Ms Grace apologised for mistaking the man’s nationality.
She said the police officer who spoke to the driver had not asked for identity documents, as she was on the way to deal with a serious crash. She had assumed he was Irish by his accent.
“The driver was issued a warning, ordered to remove the kayak and told to head back into town to get suitable transport arranged for the kayak before continuing his journey.”
Ms Grace said regardless of the driver’s nationality, the main focus of the incident remained road safety and the risks posed by the driver to other road users.
