Randall Reports

Brakes used to simply stop a vehicle, they are now an important component of an active safety system. Does the new Brake Rule go too far too soon, when in NZ, from what I have read and seen, the major problem is do the brakes work at all?

Trucks are driven fundamentally different to cars, in that that they are almost never driven on their brakes - almost always coasting to a stop, and only being applied in an emergency situation or final stopping. Powerful electromagnetic, or hydraulic, or less common now, exhaust brakes, provide the majority of the retardation required for a heavy motor vehicle (hmv).

The new brake rule was fully implemented on the 1st July 2008 - basically the idea of the rule is that a hmv individually or in combination must be able to stop efficiently whether empty or fully laden. The rule has no grandfather rights, meaning ALL hmv’s modified now must comply with this requirement.

Things such as wheel base alterations will require certification to the brake rule as the amount of weight transferred to the vehicle’s front axle will change under stopping. The difficulty is that in order to achieve certification to the rule, almost all vehicles (if not all) will require either load sensing brakes or ABS - meaning a considerable additional cost when modifying a vehicle. The same will also apply for the fitting of a drawbeam if trailer brake gear does not come as part of the truck package.

From what I have seen, from the 1st Jully the fitment of new drawbeams to old trucks has stopped, so also has wheelbase alteration or axle configuration alterations.

If you are going to purchase a second-hand truck, REALLY IMPORTANT - select a vehicle which is the closest fit to the vehicle that you need - don’t expect, as of right, to be able to alter the vehicle afterwards.

If you plan to modify a truck for whatever reason, VERIFY FIRST that the brakes are able to be set up to comply with requirements. I do not know whether it is possible to fit ABS brakes to all makes & models - I have heard figures of 5k for ABS truck kits, then there is brake relining & certification on top of that.

From our point of view, the cost of certifying a brake modification for a new vehicle with information from the manufacturer is $750 - for a second-hand vehicle, our best estimate is $1500. Based on workflow prior to July 1st, we would have anticipated a couple of wheelbase alterations to old trucks & a few drawbeams fitted to second-hand Japanese imports. Since this date, we have seen several new vehicles, but no inservice vehicles.

What does this all mean? I suspect it means the end of truck modifications as we used to know them.

Truck handling systems, like cars, have become more sophisticated and the vehicle brakes are an active component of the vehicle’s safety system - and this cannot be altered willy nilly.

Whether, when all factors are considered this added compliance burden will be beneficial to the NZ economy as a whole (and, in my view, this is the real question) - I don’t know. I am aware that the most fundamental problem for inservice heavy motor vehicles is whether the brakes operate at all and this has to be addressed first.

Are we simply becoming busier and busier doing things that the world doesn’t care about?? The cynic in me says there is a risk that active vehicle safety systems for trucks will only guarantee that the crashes, when they do occur, will be at worse because they will be at a higher speed. Driver’s have to drive within the vehicle’s limitations and not use these new active safety systems for getting from A to B quicker.

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