A car fleeing police crashed into another car at a Yaldhurst Rd intersection in Christchurch in December 2014.

A woman whose partner was killed by a driver fleeing police says the government's new law changes to combat the problem does not go far enough.

Drivers who evade police will face having their cars impounded for a month, or even sold, under proposed new laws announced on Wednesday by Police Minister Michael Woodhouse.

Any drivers convicted of failing to stop for police will also have their licences suspended for six months for the first offence, 12 months for the second, and two years for a third.

Woodhouse, who made the announcement as he opened the Police Association's annual conference in Wellington, said police would also have the power to impound a driver's vehicle for 28 days if it was used to flee police and they refused to give information about who was driving.

Mandatory confiscation would also apply for second and subsequent failures to stop within a four-year period.

But Bronwyn Hewitt said she was disappointed the government was not doing more to keep offenders locked up.

Her longtime partner, police officer Derek Wootton, was run over and killed in 2008 by a driver fleeing police in Porirua.

"Half the time the pursuing drivers are in a stolen car. So If he thinks that's a great law change, it isn't," she said.

Hewitt believed harsher sentences needed to be handed down, saying confiscating cars was just a slap on the wrist.

"They need to be given longer sentence times. The same ones are out there doing it night after night," she said.

"Half of them don't have licenses, half over them are under 15 years-old."

Those who evaded police knew they could only be chased for so long, she said.

"They know that once they get up to certain speed the police will abandon the pursuit because it becomes tot dangerous," she said.

"If you take their car away they will just go get another one. I don't know what we can do, apart from having harsher penalties."

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Announcing the move, Woodhouse said 29 people died between 2010 and 2014 in incidents in which drivers fled police.

The Police Association, which represents about 11,000 police employees, called for harsher penalties for fleeing drivers ahead of last year's general election. It wanted mandatory vehicle impounding and licence suspension, and mandatory third-party insurance for all drivers.

At that time, president Greg O'Connor reasoned that the measures were needed to counteract a prevailing view that police were to blame when chases ended in deaths.

Woodhouse told the conference the majority of drivers who fled police were young.

There were about 2300 fleeing driver incidents every year and in 2014-15 they resulted in 460 crashes, or more than one a day, he said. He believed the new policy would make them fear not stopping, as they did not want to lose their licences or cars.

"We know that these drivers understand that the faster they go the more likely they are to have police stop chasing. That creates a vicious cycle.

"You often hear on the TV, police have pulled out and 30 seconds later the car's wrapped around a tree. That infers police were to blame for that. I think that's incredibly unfair."

O'Connor said many of the drivers were "drunk idiots" who would not be put off breaking the law by harsher consequences.

However, word would get out among some habitual offenders, in much the same way as previous "boy racer" legislation, which brought in car crushing for the worst speedsters.

"I think if they know they could lose the car, that is actually something that could work," O'Connor said.

"When you introduce any new sanction it's got to be something that you could imagine the crooks, these idiots, sitting around talking about. And they'll talk about losing their cars."

In his own opening address, O'Connor reiterated the association's long-held position on the full arming of police.

Earlier this year, Police Commissioner Mike Bush announced all frontline officers would get Tasers.

O'Connor said there was a "lack of political will" to also give guns to all police, but called on Woodhouse to order an inquiry into the availability of guns to criminals.

Woodhouse said trends in police data did not support the theory that gun violence was increasing, as it accounted for less than half a per cent of all recorded crime.