The purpose of this Members Bill is to amend the Land Transport Act to allow vehicles which are responding to electrical emergencies to be able to display lights which require general traffic to pull over and let the vehicle through. This Bill achieves this aims through relatively minor, targeted changes.

This Bill is required for a number of reasons:

• Increased congestion is causing an increase in the amount of time that it takes to respond to an electrical emergency.

• There are more people who rely on electricity for health reasons, and therefore power outages can put people at risk.

• Often other emergency services have to wait for electricity technicians to turn the power off before they can take action. For example a car which has driven into a power pole.

Whilst few other countries currently allow for this, there are a variety of rules which give vehicles responding to electrical or gas emergencies some priority.

• Sweden requires drivers to make way for vehicles responding a lifesaving situation or protecting some vital system of society.

• France requires drivers to ‘facilitate the passage’ of vehicles which are responding to electrical or gas emergencies when their blue lights are flashing.

• In New Zealand Auckland Transport recently allowed these vehicles to utilise bus lanes in their network, however NZTA doesn’t allow them to use their network, such as the Northern Busway.

This Bill achieves its aims by:

Amending the Land Transport Act 1998 by inserting a new section 153A following section 153, and a new section 164A following section 164. New section 153A enables the Minister to make rules concerning electrical emergency vehicles. New section 164A requires the Minister to allow electrical emergency vehicles to use beacons which require other drivers to give way to the emergency vehicles. Section 164A is repealed 6 months after the commencement of the Bill.