NZTA is testing its weigh-in-motion technology at its Glasnevin site in Canterbury.

The tech aims to screen and collect truck and operator info using sensors that capture the truck on the move to record weight and static cameras to monitor number plates and identify potential non-compliance. The NZTA industry update on the rollout to recover RUC arrears included an interesting statistic. Over the period between 1 and 17 October, when it identified 18,953 heavy vehicle passages, it assessed RUC to be underpaid in 73 cases, or 0.4%.

Transporting New Zealand doesn’t condone non-compliance, but we also appreciate that 100% compliance can be very hard to achieve. So, I think compliance of 99.6% is an extremely good result, and it demonstrates that the vast majority of operators are playing by the rules.

I haven’t seen any recent data, but my recollection from previous Cabinet papers is that NZTA estimated that unpaid RUC was about 6% each year. The 2024 to 2027 NLTP forecasts net RUC income of being $6.7 billion, and while light vehicles also pay RUC, the vast majority of RUC is paid by heavy vehicles.

Estimating the amount of unpaid RUC was always going to be challenging, as you can never know what you don’t know.

But given the latest findings of heavy vehicle RUC compliance, which are orders of magnitude higher than what NZTA had earlier estimated, I presume NZTA will be having a major rethink on how much effort and money it wants to continue investing in improving RUC compliance.

Work health and safety

We recently provided our formal submission to MBIE on work health and safety.

New Zealand’s health and safety performance lags well behind Australia and the UK. The five-year average fatality rate to 2024 remains much higher than in Australia (1.6 times) or in the UK (6.4 times). Given that context, we believe significant improvements need to be made.

Road freight transport is typically just one link in most supply chains. We’ve made the point that we repeatedly see the influences and behaviours of other parties in the supply chain occurring without due consultation, which adversely impacts on road transport operators.

When Transporting New Zealand has raised its concerns with other supply-chain parties about how they operate and the flow-on effects this has on transport operators, those concerns have often gone unheeded. We hope there will be changes to improve this situation.

As we did with our submission a few weeks ago during consultation on ACC levies, we’ve taken this opportunity to reiterate our concern about ACC’s proposal to close the Fleet Saver audit programme.

A number of our members are achieving good work and improved safety outcomes from this programme, which its closure will endanger. We’ve offered to work with ACC to reform and improve the scheme.

Accident investigation

I joined RNZ National’s Nine to Noon show for a good chat about the possibility of extending the TAIC’s (Transport Accident Investigation Commission) role to investigating heavy vehicle incidents. We believe this approach has considerable merit, particularly if TAIC could act proactively and not wait until a major incident. The main regulators in our space – the police, NZTA and WorkSafe – are, as one would expect, strongly focused on compliance.

With the advent and increased use of telematics, NZTA, as is its right, has been strongly focused on reconciling the records from operators’ logbooks with telematics data. Undertaking such a reconciliation allows inconsistencies to be identified, such as the vehicle moving during a period recorded as a rest break. Drivers are expected to complete their logbooks accurately, and there shouldn’t be discrepancies, even by a few minutes.

The value TAIC would bring is that although still connected to the government, it acts independently of the regulators and its approach is not to apportion blame and its findings cannot be used for taking prosecutions.

As a result, the findings of its investigations are likely to be very different from work done by a regulator and much more likely to identify opportunities to remedy system issues.

We’ll have to wait and see whether this progresses or not. I wrote a paper about it when I was at the Ministry of Transport in 2007 and the idea is still bouncing around.