‘Missed opportunity’ for fleet
The Motor Trade Association (MTA) says it is disappointed the government has decided against mandating any of the extra advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) proposed for new and used vehicle imports.
The coalition has announced it will not proceed with a plan to mandate new safety features after consultation on the proposals in late 2025 and further analysis by officials this year.
For light and heavy vehicles, officials considered mandating automatic emergency braking, lane-keep support systems, and acoustic vehicle-alert systems for “quiet” electric and hybrid units.
Making electronic stability control and anti-lock braking systems compulsory for new and used heavy vehicles was also on the cards.
James McDowall, MTA’s head of advocacy, says the association supported the proposed requirements and notes some of those could have been phased in rather than being dropped entirely.
“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,” he told Autofile Online.
“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.”
He explains that most new vehicles coming into New Zealand already have the proposed ADAS features, “so the cost of locking them in was low and it would have set a clear baseline for the fleet”.
For used imports, the MTA acknowledged during consultation the difficulties of verifying features vehicle by vehicle and said any transition needed to reflect what is available in the source market. “We accept the government’s view that uptake will happen in any case,” says McDowall, pictured.
He continues that New Zealand needs 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 altogether.”
The MTA’s wider concern is changes to the warrant of fitness (WOF) regime with vehicles up to 14 years old moving to two-yearly inspections, which the government considered at the same time as the ADAS proposals.
“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,” notes McDowall.
“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.”
