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Issue No. 380 May 2014

CVIU turns up the heat

Senior Sergeant Leah Everest carries out a roadside check.

The heat goes on high-risk commercial vehicles in Auckland this month as staff from around the country join up for a multi-agency operation known as Twistlock.

“We’re excited,” says Senior Sergeant Leah Everest, Team Leader of Area 1 Commercial Vehicle Investigation Unit (CVIU). “An operation of this type and scale hasn’t been ventured for several years.”

Some 80 staff from all four national CVIU areas will saturate the Auckland area - which has more trucks, buses and taxis than the rest of New Zealand combined - to work around the clock for at least five days.

Their capabilities will be boosted by vehicle safety officers from NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), Police field intelligence officers and motorway patrol. Ministry of Justice bailiffs will be on hand to deal with fine warrants.

Twistlock is New Zealand’s contribution to AUSTRANS, an annual operation run by police jurisdictions here and in Australia to target safety issues in the heavy vehicle road transport sector. Leah expects the results will guide CVIU’s future operations.

“I’d like to be optimistic about what we’ll find – a good percentage of the industry is compliant,” she says. "We want to target high-risk operators and identify those that aren’t meeting requirements.”

Activity 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.

The aim isn’t to punish but to work with operators to bring them into line. “A 40-tonne rig with a tired driver or two bald tyres and inefficient brakes is a danger to all road users,” says Leah. “For CVIU, Prevention First means getting compliance across the board.”

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