Disappointing that Safety Features Proposal Abandoned

MTA Head of Advocacy James McDowall says MTA supported the proposed requirements.

“Most new vehicles coming into New Zealand already have these features, so the cost of locking them in was low, and it would have set a clear baseline for the fleet,” he says.

“For used imports we acknowledged the difficulties of verifying features vehicle by vehicle and said any transition needed to reflect what is actually available in the source market. We accept the Government’s view that uptake will happen in any case.

“We are disappointed that of all the options, none of them are proceeding.  While we accept the changes would have been harder to mandate and implement for used imports, it would have been straightforward to apply to new vehicles.”

Acoustic alerting for quiet electric and hybrid vehicles is a good example of a missed opportunity, given the benefit for pedestrians at relatively low cost, Mr McDowall says.

MTA’s view is that the country does need to modernise its fleet gradually, for both safety and emissions. The price argument has some weight, and the full package on the timetable proposed may not have been the right call. But that simply means change should have been phased, not abandoned all together.

“Our wider concern is the Warrant of Fitness (WoF) change, with vehicles up to 14 years old moving to two-yearly inspections,” James McDowall says.

“The safety features consulted on in parallel were the one thing the Government could have pointed to as lifting the safety baseline while inspection intervals lengthened. Dropping all of them removes even that. We’d hope the proposals were serious from the outset, rather than there to make the WoF extension easier to accept.”

Whether or not these features are mandated, they are arriving in the fleet, and the practical issue for road safety is keeping them working. Camera and radar systems need recalibration after windscreen replacement, bumper work, or collision repair, and that still needs proper standards behind it.

“That work doesn’t go away with this decision,” Mr McDowall says.