By Matthew Rosenberg , Local Democracy Reporting
49 mins ago

Staff at a southern council appear to be slowing down on the roads after the organisation made headlines last year for speeding vehicles.


An Environment Southland report prepared for a meeting this week showed that from October to December, 407 speeding events were recorded for cars
travelling more than 10km/h over the limit.


That figure was less than half that of the previous quarter where 884 events were recorded.


Environment Southland health, safety and risk manager Paul le Roux said the reduction was significant but still relatively high.

"There seems to have been some progress since we have been regularly
reporting to our managers on their staff's driving behaviours, and that seems to have had an initial impact," le Roux said.


"The challenge is now to keep that constantly going down."


The total number of high speeding events where staff exceeded the speed limit by more than 20km/h also dropped from 39 to just four between quarters.


Council cars are fitted with both a monitoring system and an audible alarm
that goes off when the speed limit is exceeded.


When that occurs, an event is created in the system.


A total 240 harsh braking events were recorded in the last quarter, but le
Roux said a major contributor was staff driver training at a track.

Environment Southland serves one of the largest regions in the country by
land area, which was reflected in the number of kms clocked up by staff over the three months - 215,652km.


LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.

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