FEATURE
CVST staff will soon have six of the new Mobile Roller Brake Test units in service around New Zealand.
Brake testing goes mobile By Dave McLeod
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New CVST mobile roller brake testers will improve road safety and reduce the risk of a serious injury or death on our roads as a result of a heavy vehicle brake failure. BEGINNING JUNE, NZ POLICE COMMERCIAL VEHICLE SAFETY teams (CVST) will be able to identify brake failures anytime, anywhere thanks to six new BM20200 mobile roller brake testers (MRBTs) being rolled out nationwide. CVST Acting Inspector Lex Soepnel told NZ Truck and Driver; “New Zealand road toll stats are a lot higher than the rest of the world and one of the points that has come out of the ‘Road to Zero’ campaign is the need for safer vehicles on the road, particularly commercial vehicles. “We want the vehicles on the road to be safe - there’s no compromise, and as you’d appreciate, brakes are a very
important safety device.” To emphasise the point, Soepnel says that during the research stage they used the Paengaroa CVSC (as it’s the only location that currently has a CVST operated roller brake test machine) and between 2018 and 2021 they tested 2500 trucks with 67% failing the test! “Now bear in mind this is a fixed ‘in-ground’ test at the station there [not a mobile one], so it’s known there’s a safety centre there, and we were still getting a 67% failure rate,” Soepnel says. He says the results prompted them to go mobile. Truck & Driver | 73
