A southern council’s work cars have been clocked speeding 884 times in just three months – an increase on the previous quarter’s report.
However, Environment Southland says speeding incidents are now dropping as managers take a more proactive stance against offenders.
The council made headlines in September for registering 856 speeding events of more than 10km/h in its company cars for the period April to June.
It has now revealed that number jumped to 884 for the July to September quarter.
The latest period also saw a total 39 “high speeding events” recorded for exceedances of more than 20km/h over the limit — an increase of 11 from the previous quarter.
Environment Southland health, safety and risk manager Paul le Roux said there had been a “significant reduction” in speeding over the past couple of months, which will show in the next report.
Le Roux said even though monitoring software EROADS had been in council vehicles for several years, compliance was stepping up.
“We’ve really taken a far more proactive stance against those offenders that are taking speeding for granted,” he told councillors.
“We’ve implemented a system of actually providing the reports to our managers now.”
Safety conversations were had with those who exceeded the speed limit by a certain amount, he said.
A report prepared by le Roux for Wednesday’s meeting noted Environment Southland covered the second-largest geographical area of any regional council in the country.
It said EROAD reporting had been provided to managers each month since July, but there had been little change in either the number or types of speeding events since.
LeRoux told councillors the incidents tended to be “very short spikes” where people had either drifted over the speed limit, failed to slow down quickly enough, or sped up too soon.
The council has previously revealed all its vehicles are fitted with both a monitoring system and audible alarm that goes off when the speed limit is exceeded.
When that occurs, an “event” is created in the system.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
