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Winston Peters alleges cover-up over Interislander crash (www.rnz.co.nz)

submitted 11 months ago by Dave@lemmy.nz to c/politics@lemmy.nz

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Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters has alleged a cover-up at KiwiRail over the grounding of the Aratere last month.

There were allegations from coalition government partner New Zealand First earlier this week the accident last month happened after "someone put the autopilot on, went for a coffee, and then couldn't turn the autopilot off in time when that someone came back".

Party leader Peters on Thursday morning appeared to distance himself from the claim, before doubling-down on it.

"But here's the point - at the moment we heard this story, it was clear as daylight that something dramatically had gone wrong, that shouldn't have gone wrong, and we find out it was on autopilot." Peters said the party had sources on the boat itself, which relayed the 'coffee break' claim.

"I am the acting prime minister, and the reality is that we are wanting to hear the truth, but we don't want to delay any longer. And in a way, you can say I'm asking KiwiRail [to] front up - right here right now."

Labour leader Chris Hipkins was unimpressed with New Zealand First posting the claim to social media, rather than sharing whatever information it had with investigators.

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[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 9 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Ok so someone made a mistake and applied an auto-pilot command early.....it happens.

It appeared from that point, a crew member had inadvertently hit an execute button, causing the vessel to alter its course in a way it would do around about one nautical mile further along. As this happened early and steered it towards the shore.

As an automation engineer, my first though is why is this even able to happen? Once you are outside the area where you need a local pilot to guide you, shouldn't the system check the GPS location to ensure that the commands make sense. This should be easy to check!

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