One of Transporting New Zealand’s objectives this year is to focus on enabling change and having a regulatory system and framework more responsive to the opportunities presented by technology.

Innovative high-productivity vehicles play an important role in unlocking safety, environmental and economic benefits. This will also play a key part in improving the country’s economic performance.

Many other countries are going with vehicles like this, and we would be disappointed if New Zealand didn’t keep up and missed some golden opportunities to improve productivity.

Technology has improved, as has our ability to understand the low- and high-speed performance of heavy vehicles. From the analysis we have seen, there are many gains, given the reduction in vehicle kilometres these vehicles result in.

Super-high-productivity vehicles are a “win-win” solution. We support the proposal, and we urge NZTA to continue considering innovative vehicles and transport solutions like this.

Make no mistake: One of the risks we are facing is being hamstrung by our current regulatory system.

For example, there are legacy policies such as a “limit” of 25m for vehicle combinations. In our view, these limits become irrelevant if the route is appropriate.

As well, many of those legacy limits apply only to divisible loads but, in reality, I suspect many thousands, if not tens of thousands, of over-dimension indivisible loads exceeding 25m in length have travelled safely on our roads. This shows that under the appropriate conditions, the movement of vehicles and loads over 25m can be safely managed.

In a similar vein, Transporting New Zealand sees no rational reason for NZTA to have an arbitrary blanket limit restricting the journey length of specific routes when considering super-high productivity vehicles.

Enabling a system that can work more efficiently will require a new way of thinking with our regulatory partners, along with managing the risk of increasing compliance costs, which is a key focus this year.

But there is good news around innovation. NZTA’s proposed vehicle driver licence exemption to allow small battery electric trucks is a good example of it being more responsive to allow positive change. We started pushing for it nearly two years ago, but progress is progress!

A good lesson in safety

A few weeks ago, thanks to the Log Transport Safety Council, we were able to share some lessons from a highly publicised incident regarding a trailer becoming dis-coupled while being towed on the highway. That incident could potentially have led to more serious outcomes, and luckily no one was hurt.

Ultimately, the lesson came down to ensuring critical systems aren’t at risk of a “single point failure”.

NZTA has also followed up with a safety alert in mid-February. For me, the response to the issue is a good demonstration of the industry and regulator promptly acting when problems arise.