Company charged after trucker’s death now researching high-tech forestry road safety

Greg Stevens was on his third trip out with a full load of logs on his truck from a forest near Te Mata in Coromandel when he crashed off a private road and was killed.

His death in May 2023 has now led to a literal laser focus being put on the state of old forestry roads to enable high-tech checks on them ahead of time.

A project to use a laser-equipped drone to measure the geometry of the old roads has been set up between the regulator WorkSafe and the company that controlled the logging road, Forest360.

Joe Akari who heads up the Forest Industry Safety Council is backing it.

“The old roads are still in place and as you’d expect, modern trucking units are a bit bigger, a bit longer, and therein lies some of the challenges,” Akari said.

What occurred on Wairotoroto Road, halfway between Thames and Coromandel town, showed up deficiencies not just in the roads but in the current ways of assessing the risks of hauling heavy loads on them.

“Many forestry roads in New Zealand are old and potentially unsafe, having been built decades ago to outdated engineering standards,” said WorkSafe.

The agency’s investigation found the design, maintenance and risk assessment of the road by forest manager Forest360 was inadequate.

It was charged, but has now agreed to what is called an ‘enforceable undertaking’.

Yet WorkSafe’s report showed Wairotoroto Road was checked several times by a haulage company before and after logs began being trucked out in January 2023.

“No issues were identified by these inspections,” said a summary.

“Many loads were carted out of the forest using 9-axled trucks and trailers prior to the event.”

In fact, just the day before the crash, a haulage manager did further checks to ensure the assessment that the road was okay was correct.

Stevens, 59, had taken out loads on 18 and 19 May. On the 27th, having got up at 3am, he was back at the loading site, where 47 tonnes of logs went on his truck.

Another driver left loaded up a few minutes later.

“As he reached the arrowhead corner, he noticed that a truck had gone off the road and over into the bank. Unfortunately, the victim had died at the scene,” the summary said.

Forest360 was charged with one health and safety offence. Two other businesses remain before the courts in relation to the death.

However, under the enforceable undertaking, it has committed to spend over $400,000; some on amends to the trucker’s widow, but also towards plugging the old forest road’s gap.

WorkSafe summed that up: “Currently in the New Zealand forestry industry, there is no existing methodology for users of existing forestry roads to easily and effectively conduct geometry assessments of these roads against current and relevant engineering standards for road construction.”

Over the next year or so, Forest360 will pay to develop a method and software for analysing forestry roads, based on research using either existing sources of Light Detection and Ranging or LiDAR data, or new data from a $50,000 LiDAR-equipped drone.

“It has the potential to provide the sector with additional controls around roading risks and the carriage of large trucking units,” said Akari.

WorkSafe added: “The software development has the potential to transform how forestry roads are assessed for safety.

“By making cutting-edge technology accessible across the industry, Forest360’s initiatives could significantly reduce risk and save lives.”

This could spread to farm roads, the reports say.

Forest360 cooperated with WorkSafe’s investigation, was remorseful and had no previous convictions under health and safety laws.

Its managing director Dan Gaddum said it deeply regreted the tragic loss of a logging truck driver employed by one of its subcontractors.

“This incident has strengthened our resolve to lead improvement across the industry. Sometimes it’s less about dwelling on what went wrong, and more about doing something meaningful to stop it happening again,” Gaddum said on WorkSafe’s website.

It was the first time WorkSafe had accepted a commitment to an enforceable undertaking from the forestry sector.

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