Transport agency disputes ‘systemic failure’ led to Johnathon Walters’ death

A road worker was crushed on a Remuera street last year by a runaway truck that had been banned from the road multiple times since 2017. Photo / 123rf

By Phil Pennington of RNZ

Road workers who were on a crew with Johnathon Walters do not want to talk about his death 15 months ago – it is just too raw.

Walters was crushed on a Remuera street last year by a runaway truck so unsound it had been banned from the road multiple times since 2017.

Ashik Ali, operator and director of Ashik Transport, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Truckers are speaking up, angry about a road-safety system they say is full of holes.

Many others were flouting the rules, one said.

“Systemic failure killed Johnathon Walters,” a National Road Carriers Association post read.

But NZTA has rejected that.

Murray Robertson was in Auckland when it happened. He had to front up to the bereft crew.

“It’s particularly difficult when you know the individuals and you’ve got to walk in the room and look in, look in their eyes and, you know, explain if you’ve done everything you possibly can to make sure this doesn’t happen.”

Now managing director of Downer in New Zealand, he knew Walters from the “early days”, the latter working on paving crews and him in road construction.

“So I actually knew him personally.

“The next day I went to our depot where we brought our crew together and they were extremely impacted and shaken up, to the point, you know, these are tough grown men and they were they were in tears.”

The team was like a family. “In fact, our supervisor and foreman are related and the team are very close to Jonno’s family. So for them it’s not just losing a colleague, it’s almost like losing part of the whānau, you know?

“It’s raw for them because they’ve had to get on and get back to operating as a team.”

Downer New Zealand managing director Murray Robertson. Photo / Supplied, Downer NZ

‘Disbelief that this could happen’

Sadness lingered, but other feelings, too.

“Given the circumstances and how it happened, there was not just the sadness, there was a fair degree of anger as well [and] I guess disbelief that this could happen,” Robertson said.

The truck had a full load of chip seal on board when its brakes failed and it began rolling down Remuera’s Victoria Ave after 8pm on May 8, 2024, zig-zagging for 400m, hitting Walters, two lamp posts and a wall, before stopping, the Herald reported.

“I tried to press the brake, speed or clutches,” Ali told police when they spoke with him at Middlemore Hospital, where he fled to afterwards. “Nothing would work.”

He had gotten away with using a truck for years that had been banned by police and inspectors multiple times.

The 55-year-old Aucklander ran the truck with bad brakes from the time he bought it in 2017, despite police checks, inspections and pink stickers meant to blacklist it. The stickers were pulled off. For the last three years or so the truck had no certificate of fitness (a Cof, like a car Wof). To get around registering a truck without a Cof, Ali appeared to have changed the plates.

“The current system has no teeth,” the New Zealand Trucking Association said.

Carriers Association boss Justin Tighe-Umbers told RNZ, “They are outraged that this has resulted in a death that looks completely needless and they want to see these gaps plugged.”

Individual, not system, to blame – NZTA

NZTA rejected the claims of systemic failure.

“NZTA had applied the regulatory levers available to identify the poor state of the vehicle and to address the immediate risk to public safety,” it told RNZ.

“Regardless, an individual (Mr Ali) subsequently made a decision to illegally drive this unregistered and unsafe vehicle after it had been ordered off the road, resulting in the death of another person.”

Though it never revoked Ashik Transport’s transport service licence (TSL), given that Ali drove a pink-stickered vehicle when that was illegal, it was “highly unlikely” that revoking his TSL would have changed the tragic outcome, it said.

His guilty plea spoke strongly “to the actions of the individual”.

Cause for despair

A trucker, John Baillie, said the case was a cause for “despair”.

“I was at a function on Saturday night where the Herald article on Mr Ali was the hot topic of conversation with people getting quite vocal regarding the ongoing level of offending that seemed to go unchallenged over time despite multiple flags being raised,” he told the Carriers Association in a August 4 email.

“He is one of many others operating this way.

“I certainly get the feeling that a lot of good operators are really starting to get frustrated with what they are seeing - reading and hearing about these dishonest operators that are just running rampant round the place with non-compliant equipment with next-to-no enforcement or agency involvement allowing them to take the piss out of the compliant operators.”

Tighe-Umbers said their efforts for three years to get truck licensing and other protections tightened up were bogged down.

“It is glacial in how long it is taking to get recommendations through and action taken.”

‘A lack of power’

Ali’s whole fleet was inspected in 2020 after maintenance failings. He was put on a regime of extra maintenance and having to get certificates of fitness (a COF, the truck equivalent of a WOF) every three months, instead of the usual six, the reporting from court said.

“NZTA had identified Ashik Transport as a poor operator, and had taken a range of measures to address the safety risks identified,” the agency said.

But the truck banned in 2018 was caught again, by police roadside, in 2021 with loads of safety defects.

More stickers were put on it.

Pamela Bonney of Auckland trucker LW Bonney and Sons said there was high frustration among good operators who spent a lot of time and resource making sure their trucks were safe to go to work every day.

“What this case highlights is that there’s a lack of power for the police and NZTA to actually take action when required,” she said.

“As a good operator, we want to see good operators prospering and those that do not have a desire to comply shut down.”

NZTA Waka Kotahi said the measures it took included an initial decision to revoke the transport service licence of Ashik Transport.

Instead, after formal discussions, it issued a Notice of Improvement for the extra checks.

Transport Minister Chris Bishop says he agrees rules reform is needed. Photo / RNZ, Mark Papalii

‘Proceed at pace’

Tighe-Umbers said change was urgent but not arriving. “We’ve been in discussions with the Ministry of Transport for many years about policy fixes needed in the system.”

Most recently, this had bogged down at a government working group set up by former Transport Minister Simeon Brown and continued by the current one, Chris Bishop, he said.

Bishop told RNZ: “Rules reform is complex, but I agree this work needs to proceed at pace.”

In June, he announced the country’s land transport rules reform to, in the first place, “increase productivity and efficiency”.

A Beehive media release also said it would “improve safety”.

Among the seven reform tasks would be “simplifying heavy vehicle driver licensing, weight thresholds, and freight permitting to improve efficiency and productivity for the freight sector”.

Bishop, in a statement to RNZ, noted another task: investigating whether to require heavy vehicles entering the fleet to be fitted with extra safety features.

On the truck safety front, they were opening new commercial vehicle safety centres and ensuring police focused on the highest risk and harm, he said.

Police inspected 11% more heavy vehicles last year, totalling 52,478, against a target of 50,000. They also added five jobs to the safety team, with more training, including online for all frontline police.

Bishop, like NZTA, extended their deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Walters, and everyone else affected by the tragedy.

‘Far too easy’

Tighe-Umbers said, in an article for transport media outlets, that it was “far too easy” to become a transport operator in New Zealand – and far too difficult to stop repeat offenders who continually ignored the rules.

“Once you pass an open-book test, you’re licensed to operate a transport business of any size, no business plan, no proof of sustainability, and no required experience or expertise.”

Pink stickers were “meaningless” to recidivists, court action was too slow or ineffective, and detection “nearly impossible in a large city without sufficient enforcement resources”.

Ali had little chance of being caught unless he had been stopped at a Commercial Vehicle Safety Centre or flagged by road police, Tighe-Umbers said.

“This is not the fault of frontline NZTA or police staff.”

Some in the industry call such unregistered, often dangerous, vehicles “ghost trucks”. Part of the problem, they say, is that in this country a transport service licence applied to a company, as opposed to an individual truck as it did in the UK, where it was easier to track a vehicle and impound it, they said.

Some also questioned the willingness of NZTA Waka Kotahi to throw the book at rogue operators.

“Amendments where they are necessary”

But NZTA said that certificates of fitness were already linked to transport service licences.

Ali’s truck did not have a COF and had been ordered off the road, but he chose to drive it in spite of this, it said.

Legislative change was not its function, but led by the ministry, it added.

“NZTA supports and suggests amendments where they are necessary.

“NZTA is continually reviewing our regulatory processes and decision-making.”

It worked closely with police and the Crown Prosecutor to support the prosecution; it would not comment further prior to Ali’s sentencing in November.