Ritchies Transport has been convicted and sentenced for a Christmas Eve bus crash that left three people dead and many injured.
The company was ordered to pay a fine of $210,000, and reparation to the families of the deceased and the passengers totalling $750,000, in a Waitakere District Court hearing on September 20.
One of its buses went through a barrier and fell 30 metres down a bank just south of Gisborne in 2016.
The bus had been hired from Ritchies to transport a Tongan brass band who were travelling from Hamilton to Gisborne.
Two passengers died at the scene of the incident, and another died in hospital a few days later. Another passenger’s leg was amputated and some of the 50 surviving passengers suffered injuries including broken wrists, lacerations and bruising.
WorkSafe’s chief inspector investigations Hayden Mander says WorkSafe opened a health and safety investigation after police investigated the crash and found that Ritchies had not serviced the bus (which was overdue for a 5,000 km service) or done any other back up mechanical inspection on it before it departed from the depot.
Ritchies had also failed to provide the driver with any guidance on what to do in the case of a fault developing – which was itself a breach of a Land Transport Rule.
“Ritchies should have ensured that there was an adequate and effective safe system of work so that arrangements for the hire of buses were safe and suitable.
“This would have included verifying that the bus was in a safe and compliant operational condition before it was hired out and providing the driver with adequate information including clear instructions on what to do if a fault developed,” Mander says.
Ritchies director Glenn Ritchie said in a statement after the hearing the company’s procedures for hiring out of buses and coaches was not good enough.
“We do accept that not having the correct rental hire agreement requiring what a driver should do in the event of a break down or repair was a technical failure which is regrettable and should have been better. Accordingly, Ritchies has since reviewed its hire agreement process which is now more robust.
“We learnt from this incident how to improve our dry hire agreements so that hopefully drivers in the future are reminded on paper of what they are all repeatedly trained to do and how to respond to minimise the impact on our passengers, customers and communities.”
Talakai Aholelei, the driver of the bus, was sentenced last year to five-and-a-half-months home detention for his part in the crash.
He was disqualified from driving for two years and ordered to pay $36,000 in reparation.
