"To say I'm unimpressed would be one of my big understatements. I'm very disappointed. Road safety is a clear government priority and (for) a road safety agency, I'm sure New Zealanders would expect it to lead by example. Clearly here it has not already been the case."
That was Mr Bridges reaction to the New Zealand Herald's revelation today that staff at the agency charged with road safety had been caught hooning on thousands of occasions.
Asked if he was the Minister for Hoons, he said: "That's certainly something I don't want to be. I've directly contacted both the chair and chief executive on learning about this. I've made my views and expectations crystal clear. I've sought assurances from them both that in the future NZTA will lead by example in this area and speeding will come down and they will have specific actions in place to ensure that is so. It's embarrassing."
He said he would be watching the data closely to make sure his instruction was followed. "You've got a government agency here that is a key player in road safety and in many cases it has not led by example."
Mr Bridges said he had not had a speeding ticket since becoming an MP.
Labour transport spokesman Phil Twyford said he would expect the issue to be treated seriously. "The bureaucrats make the rules but they don't abide by them. Speed limits are there to save lives but these people have been treating them as minimums. They should be leading by example."
Green Party transport spokeswoman Julie Anne Genter said NZTA needed to hold itself to a higher standard and should use the GPS information to drive a culture change. "It's not a good look for them. The behaviour of employees needs to change."
Staff at the NZTA have been caught illegally hooning in work cars at least 8500 times in nine months - including over 145kmh - and not one of them will get a ticket.
The speeding staff members at the NZTA include a member of the senior leadership team and a handful of managers.
In a three month sample of the data, at least 45 of NZTA's 139 cars were found to have been driven "consistently at speeds over 110kmh and sustained high speed over a number of kilometres".
A New Zealand Herald analysis of data has found 910 instances where the cars were driven at speeds greater than 120 kmh and 130 instances of speeds over 130 km/hr. Of those, eight people exceeded 140 km/hr.
'Disappointing and unacceptable'
NZTA is the government department responsible for road safety and for setting speed limits across the country. It has repeatedly pushed through taxpayer-paid advertisements the message "Speed Kills".
Its website warns: "The single biggest road safety issue in New Zealand today is speed -- drivers travelling too fast for the conditions. In 2013, speeding was a contributing factor in 74 fatal crashes, 305 serious injury crashes and 988 minor injury crashes."
Chief executive Geoff Dangerfield described the data as "disappointing" and "unacceptable". He said staff who had been identified as exceeding the speed limit "has had a formal conversation with their manager". Asked if that was the same as a verbal warning, he agreed.
Mr Dangerfield said further beaches would be considered against the agency's Code of Conduct, which every staff member had to follow. Breaches could resulted in dismissal, he said.
"As a transport agency, there is absolutely a proposition there we have to lead by example." He said the GPS units had been installed for health and safety reasons. "Now that we have this information, it's how do we use it to turn the situation around."
Mr Dangerfield said none of the staff would be referred to police for enforcement action. "None of these things in the data have resulted in any infringement notices at all. It's not right thing for us to hand this over to police. We didn't do this from a sanctions point of view but from a health of safety point of view."
The discovery of excessive speed among its fleet of cars led to a report to NZTA's senior leadership team in March this year. It told bosses the GPS data came about as part of a "Helping You Stay Safe" campaign aimed at those driving NZTA cars. Part of the programme was replacement of cars and introduction of GPS, of which staff were informed.
The report to the senior leadership team pulled out data from January showing there were three occasions where cars were driven over 131 kmh and one case of a car being driven at 135 kmh for a sustained period.
In February, speeds were higher - the GPS data showed four cases of cars travelling at 135 kmh for sustained period and one case of a driver hitting 144kmh.
The report read: "It seems our messaging about safe driving simply isn't getting through."
Even though the issue was flagged at a senior level, the OIA material confirmed the agency did not tell Mr Bridges about the speeding until the New Zealand Herald sought the data through the Official Information Act.
The NZTA-supplied GPS data does not show whether the excessive speeds happened in 50kmh zones or on the open road, where the limit is 100kmh. The GPS system tracks exactly where the speeding happened but NZTA did not check whether staff sped through school zones, shopping centres or on the open road.
The 145kmh breaches - one in November 2014 and one in March this year - would have earned the drivers a $510 fine and 50 demerit points. NZTA's own website warns drivers that if they "accumulate 100 or more demerit points in any two-year period, your licence can be suspended for three months".
Data showed that NZTA cars exceeded the 100 kmh speed limit 34,000 times in nine months and went over 110 kmh on 2000 occasions.
The speeding by staff comes appears to align with NZTA's 2013 survey of public attitudes to speed, which found 86% of those surveyed believed speed limits on roads were about right. Only 7% of people found they were too low. However, the same survey also found one in six people believed the risk of a crash when speeding was small if care was taken. One in four people surveyed said the risk of being caught speeding was low.
NZTA has been at the centre of a number of bungles in recent times. A law had to be passed with urgency to retrospectively enforce thousands of speeding fines after an oversight saw speed limits lapse on roads across the country. NZTA's new car registration system wound up error-ridden after mistakes with the ACC component. And Mr Bridges found himself in hot water when he used public servants to provide advice that was then used in the Northland byelection.
- By David Fisher of the New Zealand Herald
