Speeding drivers, bad roads blamed for NZ truck crashes

[kscarbel2]

Radio New Zealand  /  April 20, 2016

A spate of log truck crashes in Northland is causing alarm in the community and the road freight industry.

Since last Monday, three log truck and trailer units have come to grief on bends, according to the police, with no other vehicles involved.

Since Northland forests planted 30 years ago began reaching harvest age, there have been regular reports of log trucks rolling with sometimes fatal consequences.

But three in a week spilling their logs across the highways is thought to be a record.

One of the region's most experienced road transport operators Stan Semenoff said there was only one reason - drivers were going too fast.

Mr Semenoff, a former Whangarei mayor, owns the region's biggest trucking firm Stan Semenoff Transport, said such crashes were usually avoidable.

"A log truck doesn't tip over for the sake of it," he said. "It's speed. Speed and a lack of attention to the road causes most of those single accidents where no cars are involved."

An Aztec Forestry Transport spokesperson said Northland's atrocious roads were part of the problem.

Its Whangarei manager Ian Newey said narrow, winding, and often rutted roads were unforgiving of even small errors of judgement.

"With the lack of road width and design, there is a very small margin for error,' he said.

"A slight bit of lack of concentration and it can be all over. It doesn't take much when the margin for error is so small."

Road Transport Forum chief executive Ken Shirley said the Northland roads were difficult, but ultimately there was a responsibility for the drivers to drive to the conditions.

However, there was also a responsibility for the transport operator to make sure the drivers were properly trained, he said.

"We actually have a seminar in rollover preventions, we're running this with NZTA, it's a very serious matter and the industry is taking it very seriously.

Mr Semenoff said an experienced log truck driver would take a bend at 10km/h lower than road signs recommended, to be on the safe side.

But he said growth in the industry meant it was becoming harder to find experienced New Zealand drivers and he was now bringing them in from Fiji and the Philippines.

Mr Semenoff said many had gained their experience driving for the military in places like Afghanistan, and they were steady and hard-working.

"We've been running 28 to 30 drivers short for the last eleven to twelve months," he said. "And it got painful, so we've gone outside [New Zealand].

"I don't like it, but on the same token we're still taking people in from polytech or Salvation Army training courses ... any locals who come in and are willing to give it a go. But they're not there in numbers."

Of those young drivers fresh out of their training courses, Mr Semenoff said about 12 percent would fail the compulsory pre-work drug test.

He had been forced to let others go because they were over-confident and prone to dinging fenders, or worse.

"We have put people off - and then they've joined other companies." he said.

"And they've just gone on and good on them, but they'll probably get caught with drug-testing there too."

Times they are a-changin'

Mr Semenoff said the current training system for drivers was worlds away from how he learned, riding in a truck with his father in Hokianga in the 1950s, and he was not sure it was better.

By the age of 10, he was driving an old Bedford for his Dad - doing freight deliveries, his feet barely reaching the pedals.

And according to him - he has never once rolled a truck.

"The old man used to say to me, 'make sure you throw some dirty water from a puddle over the windscreen and give it a half wipe, so they can't see who you are."

"You'd get sconed if you tried something like that today, but that's how it was in the old days and they got away with it."

Log trucks are not the only ones having accidents in the north. On Tuesday a cement truck was forced off the road south of Whangarei by a car whose driver botched a passing manoeuvre.

Roadsafe Northland said the rollovers in particular were frightening, but car drivers could reduce their risk by staying six seconds behind a truck, keeping the truck driver's wing mirror in sight and being extremely careful with overtaking.

"Passing means not getting past no matter what and cutting in quickly in front of them. Because the truck cannot slow down and respond quickly if you cut that distance too short," said education manager Gillian Archer.

Fewer steps for big-rig licence tests

Meanwhile, the national body for truckers welcomed a proposal to make it faster and cheaper to get a licence to drive the biggest vehicles.

Drivers must go through a system of four classes of licence before they can drive the heaviest truck and trailer units.

The Transport Ministry said that was too slow, and it suggested removing one category as well as the six-month learner period for the bigger vehicles.

But drivers would have to sit a tougher practical test.

Road Transport Forum had been lobbying for a change for 15 years, Mr Shirley said.

"What's happened is over the years it's gotten more and more complicated, with unnecessary steps there, and it's more expensive and it's actually a barrier to recruiting drivers.

Submissions on the proposals are open until 2 June.

Audio -http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201797736/chronic-shortage-of-qualified-truck-drivers
 

[kscarbel2]

Govt Must Provide Specialist Log Truck Driver Training

New Zealand First Party Press Release  /  April 20, 2016

The spate of log truck accidents in Northland highlight the need for the government to have a balanced transport policy that includes rail, and in addition provides specialist training for local drivers and a much greater allocation of funding to improve the roads, New Zealand First says.

“There’s a chronic shortage of drivers and it is disappointing that Northland firms are bringing drivers in from Fiji and the Philippines,” says New Zealand First Leader and Northland Member of Parliament Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“Several training courses are available in Northland but specialist training for driving big logging rigs is urgently needed.

“What is required from the government is a real understanding of Northland’s needs.

“For example, why didn’t Minister of Economic Development Steven Joyce make provision for this training in his Northland Regional Action Plan earlier this year?

“It’s practical measures like this that will get and keep Northlanders in jobs, and that’s what Northland families want.

“The shortage of skilled drivers is made worse by the horrendous state of many of the roads on which the log trucks travel.

“Since 2009 the government has cut funding for rural roads.

“They should provide rural roading support subsidies and ensure specialist log truck driver training is available in Northland,” says Mr Peters.

[kscarbel2]

Another log truck rolls in Northland

Radio New Zealand  /  May 4, 2016

Another log truck has rolled this morning in Whangarei, the fifth in a month, prompting angry residents to consider taking the law into their own hands.

The truck, which was empty, rolled on a bend about 5.30am on Otaika Road, bringing down power lines and closing the road.

It is the fifth log truck to roll in Northland in a month and the second, in that period, to roll on the same bend.

Spokesman for Northland's Grow Rail lobby group Albie Barr said local residents felt the situation was out of control and there had been talk of barricading Otaika Road.

"They're talking pretty drastic measures, and I don't blame them," he said.

"The last truck that rolled on that bend, it happened at 2.30 in the afternoon, and there's a school bus packed with kids that rocks along that road after three. But we've advised them not to take the law into their own hands."

Mr Barr said it was a matter of good luck, not good management, that no-one had yet been injured or killed as a result of the rollovers.

He said log truck drivers were in some cases immigrants, inexperienced, or both, and under pressure.

"They are poorly paid - they only get $16 an hour.

"So the pressure is on them to do long hours, and to get in as many trips as they can from the forest to the port in a day."

The police said the driver of the truck that rolled this morning suffered minor injuries, and their Serious Crash Unit was investigating.

The bend on which the crash happened has an advisory sign of 55km and police have previously said the main cause of the rollovers was excessive speed, or inattention on corners.

Mr Barr said a public meeting about the log trucks had been organised for next Tuesday, 10th May at 7pm in the Otaika Hall.

He said there would be an extra 100 log trucks a week on the road by spring, if KiwiRail went ahead with plans to mothball the rail line north of Whangarei.

.