About 70 CVIU staff, supported by vehicle safety officers from the NZ Transport Agency, Customs, Police field intelligence officers and motorway patrol staff, will saturate the Auckland area – which has more trucks, buses and taxis than the rest of New Zealand combined. Ministry of Justice bailiffs will also be on hand to deal with fine warrants.
Staff will focus on major roading corridors where there is the greatest concentration of heavy vehicles flowing through.
“We know that the majority of transport operators and drivers take their responsibilities seriously, but there are a few who don’t, and it is those we will be targeting,” says Assistant Commissioner Road Policing Dave Cliff.
Mr Cliff says the Auckland operation will focus on trucks moving from Auckland’s air and sea ports to ‘inland ports’, where containers are opened and goods reloaded for distribution. Trucks will be brought to compliance stations for a full inspection and mobile patrols will perform roadside inspections.
In addition, CVIU staff in other parts of the North Island and in the South Island will be running concurrent operations to ensure heavy vehicle safety compliance.
“These operations are not just about enforcement,” he says. “They are also an excellent opportunity to engage with individual drivers and heavy vehicle companies about how they can improve the safety of their operations, which ultimately benefits everyone.”
Because of their large mass, trucks tend to be over-represented in serious crashes. Deaths from crashes involving trucks make up around 15% of the total road toll, while only about 6% of the total distance travelled on NZ roads is travelled by trucks.
During Operation Austrans last year, Police stopped and checked a total 11740 heavy vehicles with 2520 infringements issued for a range of offences. However, positives included no infringements issued for drugged or dangerous driving.
ENDS
Operation “Twistlock” is named after a standardised rotating connector used to lock shipping containers into place on trucks, ships and trains.