Review after transport safety agency's WOF system failure

Tuesday, 27 November 2018

Urgent investigations into 19 NZ Transport Agency case files are continuing.

The possibility of thousands of Kiwis heading off on their summer holidays in cars with potentially dodgy warrants of fitness was the final straw for the beleaguered New Zealand Transport Agency.

Fed up with the stream of worrying revelations about the agency's enforcement failures, Transport Minister Phil Twyford ordered a wide ranging external review of its regulatory work.

Exactly how badly the agency has let down the travelling public remains to be seen – it has so far admitted to one death related to a broken seatbelt in an improperly warranted vehicle and intimated there is more bad news to come.

The revelations were no surprise to the transport industry which has both benefited and suffered from the agency's uneven approach to enforcement.

* Transport agency review finds more evidence of serious incidents and crashes

* NZTA told to start handing out red cards on WOFs after fatal crash

* NZTA crackdown on conflicts of interest over vehicle imports and testing**

Industry stalwarts and commentators say the current mess is the result of systemic failures going back years, compounded by repeated restructuring and loss of experienced technical staff.

The first public signs that all was not well came when the agency progressively announced the suspensions of five heavy vehicle certifiers following two non-injury incidents, one where a trailer came adrift from a truck on the road between Blenheim and Nelson.

NZTA coughed up for the reassessment of towbars and drawbars on trucks, trailers and motorhomes forcing some disgruntled truckies to park up for several weeks, and it took seven months to clear the certification backlog.

Further safety concerns surfaced when an internal review by law firm Meredith Connell of 850 agency compliance files unearthed problems with WOF standards requiring retesting of almost 6000 vehicles at taxpayers' expense.

HISTORY LESSONS

Clive Matthew-Wilson, road safety campaigner and editor of the Dog and Lemon car review website, squarely puts the blame at the feet of the former National Government.

NZ Transport Agency chief executive Fergus Gammie faces an uncertain future after Transport Minister Phil Twyford and NZTA board chairman Michael Stiassny announced an independent review of 850 open compliance files by law firm Meredith Connell, an exercise that has cost at least $400,000 to date.

He says its efforts to ease the burden on businesses and a push towards self regulation prompted the agency to take a carrot rather than a stick approach with sub standard warrant inspections and cowboy transport operators.

Matthew-Wilson points to a 2012 joint NZTA and Ministry of Transport report on vehicle licensing reform that stated the primary objective was to 'reduce compliance and administrative costs, while achieving similar or improved safety and environmental outcomes.'

Road Transport Forum chief executive Ken Shirley – a former Labour cabinet minister and Act list MP – says the creation of NZTA was a mistake.

Over the course of five years beginning in 2003 safety regulator, the Land Transport Safety Authority, was combined with Transfund, which funded the roads, and Transit NZ which built them.

Shirley believes the emphasis went off safety as NZTA focused on 'being nice' to industry customers instead of doing necessary regulation.

'We had the worst of all worlds – we had a whole lot of regulation and a regulator that wasn't regulating adequately.'

That occurred at a time of rapid road freight expansion, intense competition, and a growing shortage of experienced truck drivers.

'In the last six years there's been an additional 500,000 light vehicles registered on New Zealand roads and an extra 12,000 heavy vehicles.'

Shirley also sees a conflict of interest in the Motor Trade Association's 40 per cent ownership of VTNZ, which has 82 branches nationally issuing WOFs.

The suspension of five heavy vehicle certifiers work forced some trucks off the road until their tow bars were reassessed as safe or repaired. (file photo)

'You have a club of garage owners who perform WOFs also owning the company that has the largest market share of doing the testing of WOFs; there's not enough split there.'

Motor Trade Association chief executive Craig Pomare disputes that saying VTNZ is just one of 1800 MTA businesses doing WOF testing which was its sole focus.

'So they're not trying to line their pockets by trying to find something that doesn't need to be fixed.'

Pomare concedes the need to redo thousands of WOFs is cause for concern, but he says they are a tiny proportion of the 6 million issued annually.

CHECKING THE CHECKERS

However, MTA is far from happy with NZTA's efforts to 'check on the checkers' with about 20 agency inspectors trying to keep an eye on 12,000 WOF certifiers.

Inspections of their work had declined noticeably since 2014 when rules around the frequency of WOFs were relaxed for newer vehicles, Pomare says.

'Now it's a random visit, we've heard of a lot that haven't been seen for three or four years – the worst case we've heard of is one that has not been seen for more than 10 years.

'We think annually would be a good start point.'

NZTA had just under 1200 full time employees when it was established and it has grown to almost 1400.

Motor Trade Association chef executive Craig Pomare says warrant of fitness testers should be inspected annually by NZTA.

Pomare says finding suitably experienced staff is a challenge and a survey of his members last year suggested a national shortage of 2000 automotive technicians.

'The crop of qualified experts is very small and we're all fighting over the same pool.'

Added to that was NZTA's approach of 'inform, educate and deter' when it came to enforcement. 'It simply reflected the lack of resources to do the inspecting.'

Shirley is in no doubt that several restructurings affected agency standards. 'They just seemed to shed all the technically competent people.

'It's terrible for morale, it makes people gun shy and progressively you couldn't get a sensible decision [out of them], everyone was cautious.'

In the last six years an additional 500,000 light vehicles and an extra 12,000 heavy vehicles have hit New Zealand roads, according to Transport Forum head Ken Shirley.

IMPACT OF STAFF LOSSES

The upshot was a gobsmacking number of second chances for some repeat offenders.

The Dargaville garage responsible for warranting the car involved in January's fatal crash had been under NZTA scrutiny since 2011, and was allowed to carry on issuing warrants until late August before being suspended.

Over 17 years McCrostie Trucking in Marlborough failed 34 police road side safety inspections and committed 105 traffic-related offences before NZTA finally revoked its transport service licence in September, a decision the company is appealing through the courts.

By 2014 NZTA was down to just one full time reviewer responsible for auditing heavy vehicle certifiers, and it has recently recruited additional 22 staff including inspectors, heavy vehicle engineers, and auditors.

The police commercial vehicle safety team which combines with NZTA to do roadside inspections has also been short staffed, leading to 13,000 fewer inspections over the past three years.

An experienced vehicle certifier says the transport industry, which has to a degree been complicit in recent events, is in for a wake-up call.

'They will go anywhere where it is more cost effective for them, so they know the easy places to get a COF [certificate of fitness], where they don't look too hard, they know which engineers will cut corners because they're cheaper and quicker.'

While NZTA needs to change, he worries the pendulum will too swing too far in the other direction, leading to the loss of more experience from the already small pool of less than 200 heavy vehicle certifiers.

SAFETY TOLL

Minister Twyford was quick to reassure the public that the number of questionable WOFs was small, and that the external review of NZTA by the Ministry of Transport would look at all the agency's regulatory functions.

That includes the issuing of driver licences, heavy vehicle permits, transport licences for taxis, buses and trucking operators, rail safety and speed management.

There have been more than 340 road deaths for the year to date, compared with 378 for the whole of last year, so the pressure is on to ensure poor enforcement of vehicle standards does not add to the already high toll.

Matthew-Wilson says crash causes are not always clear cut because it can be pretty hard to find vehicle faults if they are hidden in a crumpled hunk of metal.

MOT crash analysis suggests vehicle safety contributed to between 6 and 10 per cent of fatal crashes over the past four years and Shirley says human error is a much bigger problem.

'Fatigue, speed and inattention are overwhelmingly the main causative factor.'