EEA Electricity Engineers' Association

Welcome and Introduction to the webinar
^{by Peter Berry - EEA Executive Director}

Kia ora Koutou

Welcome to our Car V pole Webinar. Each week, somewhere across New Zealand is a Car versus Pole incident, these types of events have a major impact on people lives. Safety on the roads is the sum of many parts and a deliberate, combined effort of many to keep people safe, such as road design, vehicle design and safety systems, policing and driver education. Mistakes are inevitable, but deaths and serious injuries from road crashes are not and should not be accepted.

The outcome of a Car v Pole accident results is injury of in some cases death, the pole wins most of the time. A vehicle hitting a pole is the result of something else lining occurring like the ICAM swish cheese model, weather condition, driver error, speed, vehicle condition, however the consequences of hitting or missing the pole is the difference between life and death. The result of car V pole is very predicable, the pole comes of better than the car and occupants, it's a win for the pole, sadly.

As an industry can we do anything about eliminating the risk or at the very least reduce the severity of the accident? Over several years there have been many studies on Car V pole, looking at where accidents occur, and as a result some distribution businesses have relocated poles or removed pole and installed underground cables. Yet we still have death and injuries as a result of Car V pole.

A role of EEA's is to nurture and grow our industry capability, and future engineering and safety leaders who are going to be the future innovators, influencers, and change-makers. Feedback we have received is that our EEA webinars are a fantastic approach to growing the technical learning, industry leadership and sharing the learnings from others. Today we hope that you learn about how you can take the learnings of Powerco and take leadership within your organisations to reduce the impact to the public of Car V pole accident.

This year there have been 184 deaths on the roads, the number of people whose lives that are impacted by those deaths are hundreds more. Not al deaths are contributed to Car V pole, it is are area of statistics that we don't have, is your organization accurately reporting the number of poles that are replaced due to Car V pole? We would be interested to hear.

No one organisation car "fix" the car V pole accidents, we can all take our small part and make difference. Whether you are a planner, engineer, asset manager, supplier or a driver, we can make a small difference to reduce the impact to our families, friends, neighbors and communities, by taking responsibility to our part no matter how large or small.

About the Presenters flyer

Webinar facilitator
^{by Andy Miller - QHSE Orion}