‘Witch-hunt from hell’
Mechanic’s bus crash nightmare
When a bus rolled in Otira Gorge, seriously injuring several Chinese tourists, police and transport investigators zeroed in on mechanic James Coakley. The near-five-year ordeal that followed almost destroyed him, but then the charges were suddenly dropped. He tells his story for the first time to Tony Wall.
James Coakley, 76, knows buses. The evidence of his 40-year career working on bus engines can be seen in the oil and grime caked under his fingernails; the cuts and abrasions on his wrinkled hands.
So to be accused of shoddy workmanship causing a crash that seriously injured several Chinese tourists wasn’t just a shock, it was a blow to his professional pride.
On New Year’s Eve 2015, a bus carrying 35 passengers and heading to the West Coast collided with a car travelling in the opposite direction towards the bottom of the steep section of Otira Gorge.
Only a guard rail stopped the bus from plunging into a ravine. The scene was like a war zone – bloodied passengers with broken bones and gashes; emergency workers tending to the wounded.
The occupants of the car, three Swiss tourists, were also hurt.
Seven people were flown to Christchurch Hospital and one taken by road – including three with serious injuries – while eight more were taken to Grey Base Hospital.
One person ended up having a limb amputated; a judge would later remark that for some of those involved, the crash was life-changing.
Coakley, who contracted to the owner of the bus, Travlon Coachlines, had worked on the Chinese-made, Zhongtong bus two days earlier.
“We heard there’d been an accident, a bus had rolled on the road to the West Coast,” Coakley recalls. “Next thing, I got a call from the breakdown firm [saying] it was our bus. I rang Alex [Bruce, Travlon owner]. He was more worried about the people than the bus.
“We thought we’d done nothing wrong, we had all the paperwork for it, what servicing we’d done. It was all warranted and registered, good tyres.”
Coakley says police came to his property at Ohoka, north of Christchurch, where he rents out workshop space to other businesses, with a search warrant, apparently looking for paperwork relevant to the case.
But all his records were kept at Travlon. Officers even spoke to his young adopted son, who became upset, he says. “I told them, ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree’.”
Coakley didn’t hear anything for several months, but he could “smell a rat” and rang his lawyer. “He said, ‘Things aren’t good, I’ve heard a couple of rumours ... they’re blaming you’.”
Sure enough, Coakley was charged under the Crimes Act with injuring by an unlawful act.
It carries a maximum penalty of three years’ imprisonment.
“Initially they said if I pleaded guilty, it’s probably a $2000 fine. I said, ‘I’m not gonna plead guilty, I’ve done nothing wrong’, and I say that to this day.”
In July 2016, Coakley appeared in the Christchurch District Court – the first of dozens of appearances over the next four-plus years – and pleaded not guilty. The Crown case was that the rear brakes on the bus were either not properly maintained and serviced or inadequately maintained and incorrectly adjusted by Coakley.
The Crown accepted that the driver’s actions contributed to the crash.
The bus had begun the steep descent in third or fourth gear and at excessive speed, and the driver was “more reliant on the braking system than would otherwise have been the case”.
But it argued that was a lesser factor than Coakley’s “basic failure” in not servicing the brakes properly, “if at all”.
Coakley says he was told by people involved in the case that he could never win, up against the resources of police and the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi.
But in Coakley’s mind, he’d done nothing wrong. He’d serviced the brakes as he’d done thousands of times before.
“Before a bus went away on a trip, we’d put it over the pit, grease the kingpins, walk around with a torch, look at the brakes, blow the brakes out with air to check that the lines are OK, and adjust them.
“It’s not rocket science.”
Dr Tim Stevenson, a forensic engineer who produced a report for the defence and gave evidence in court during pretrial hearings, says Coakley and Travlon’s practice was to tighten the brakes, and then back them off a quarter turn.
Better practice would be to hoist the bus in the air so the wheel could be rotated to see if the brake was binding or not, Stevenson says.
“James and I agreed to disagree on his adjusting technique. It wasn’t best practice, but it wasn’t worst practice either.
“It’s unrealistic to expect a perfect job on every heavy vehicle and every brake every time.
“I think the expectation is ‘good enough’ and to industry standard, which James’ work would have met at the time.”
One of the problems, Stevenson says, is that NZTA hadn’t released any advice on how to adjust these types of brakes.
In a statement, NZTA said it was up to transport operators to have effective systems to ensure their vehicles were safe.
It didn’t specify maintenance requirements because those varied with the type of vehicle. Manufacturers provided comprehensive advice on maintenance, it said.
Stevenson believes NZTA and police became “fixated” on Coakley and after a point, couldn’t change course.
He doesn’t believe Coakley caused the crash. “Those brakes got massively hot and the fact is, brakes work by dispersing heat, which shows that they were working.”
Stuff contacted the driver, who denied that his driving caused the crash. He did not want to comment further: “I’ve put it to bed.” He was never charged.
Richard Lowe, who has known Coakley for 30 years and helped him with his defence, believes investigators were too quick to dismiss the actions of the driver as the cause.
“They interviewed him once, and then walked away from him. Basically they got the knife out, and had to blame someone, so they blamed James.”
Lowe claims NZTA used “heavyhanded tactics” and calls its investigation “pathetic”.
“I would hate to think what it cost the New Zealand taxpayer, but I know it’s in the millions.
“It’s been an absolute witch-hunt from hell.”
(NZTA ignored questions about the cost of the investigation.)
The prosecution suffered a blow when the NZTA’s lead investigator, Paul Keating, died of cancer in April 2017. Coakley and his supporters are damning of Keating’s report, claiming it was full of errors.
Coakley says he used to look up to Keating and thought they were on good terms. “I’d invite him to Travlon [before the crash] to see what we were doing and keep onside with Land Transport, you know.”
As the weeks and months ticked by, the cost of Coakley’s defence mounted. He initially paid for his own lawyer before getting legal aid, and had to hire experts such as Stevenson and engineers from Australia.
“We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “I had to remortgage the house ... I’ll probably be paying that off for the rest of my life.”
There were unexpected consequences: under pressure from NZTA, Travlon was forced to let Coakley go; his son was teased that his dad was in trouble with police; an insurance company sent him a huge bill for items lost by passengers in the crash, claiming Coakley was liable.
He started wondering if life was worth living. His physical health was wrecked, and he began seeing a psychiatrist.
“Just imagine the mental strain. I do take things like this pretty bloody hard.”
Then, out of the blue, the Crown dropped the case. In October 2020, more than four years after Coakley was charged, it filed a memorandum confirming it would offer no further evidence.
It stated there were many “small but now unresolvable scientific questions” for which Keating was no longer alive to answer.
“The Crown is left with evidential uncertainties that it responsibly acknowledges can no longer be overcome,” the memo said.
“Just like that,” Coakley says. “I had no inkling of it, I thought, ‘It’s going to trial’ … all of a sudden they said they’re offering no evidence.
“It’s a relief, but they’d caused all the damage and walked away.”
Detective Senior Sergeant Kirsten Norton, area manager investigations, says police stand by their decision to prosecute.
It was one of the “most significant roadsafety incidents in New Zealand’s history”, she says, with 16 people injured, and the investigation was complex.
The charge was withdrawn following the death of a “significant witness” (Keating) whose evidence, along with that of defence experts, was never able to be tested in court, Norton says.
Any claims about driver error “cannot be substantiated”.
“The evidence obtained from the investigation supported the determination that mechanical fault was the primary cause of this crash.
“The bus driver expected the brakes to work. It was the fact that they didn’t that is directly attributable to the crash and serious injury to passengers of both vehicles.”
Coakley considered seeking costs, but says the Crown threatened further charges if he did so. His lawyer, Kirsten Gray, confirms that.
“I’ll never have enough money for what it cost me,” Coakley says.
He didn’t celebrate the charges being dropped – he’s not a big drinker – simply going back to work the next day, issuing Certificates of Fitness for vehicles, including buses.
In May 2021 he suffered a small brain haemorrhage, which he puts down to the stress of the case.
He still deals with the emotional, physical and financial toll, and can’t understand why he was pursued so relentlessly. “I never, ever break the rules, I’m an absolute pedant about repairs with buses.”
1. Nigel Buxton, Folds & Shadows PGgallery192, 192 Bealey Ave, Christchurch, May 7 to 31.
Still life has been a prominent subject in Nigel Buxton’s arts practice for more than 30 years, the artist continually reconsidering the nature of inanimate objects and his attention on the deceptive realities of his paintings. Folds & Shadows details both reality and illusion, establishing a relationship between viewer and objects that directs our attention back at us.
2. Hannah Kidd, In the Night Garden
Central Art Gallery, The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, 2 Worcester Blvd, Christchurch. May 16 to June 16.
As kaitiaki of her tiny block of Waitaha land, Hannah Kidd (Ngāti Toa) is now regularly witnessing the nightly devastation of her newly-planted natives. Preyed upon by introduced and local species, Kidd’s life-size hares reference a struggle for survival locally in the face of increasing displacement globally.
3. Love and Marriage: Images of Romantic Unions
Kate Sheppard House, 83 Clyde Rd, Christchurch. Till June.
Love and Marriage gives due attention to the myriad ways romantic partnerships are defined, testing assumptions about “love” in Aotearoa. Among its treasures is Jacqueline Fahey’s Drinking Couple. Married to psychiatrist Fraser MacDonald, Fahey turned the lights on domesticity in Aotearoa in a way that had few, if any, precedents in the 1970s.
4. Tamatea – Dusky Sound 1995: Mark Adams, Darren Glass, Ian MacDonald and Haruhiko Sameshima
Oxford Gallery, 72 Main St, Oxford. Till May 12.
Photographers Mark Adams, Darren Glass, Ian MacDonald and Haruhiko Sameshima visited Tamatea-Dusky Sound, Fiordland, in 1995, documenting the site Captain James Cook had visited in 1773 – its landscape and local Māori – and in 2023, the region reveals a new public visibility in the haunting and insightful touring exhibition Tamatea – Dusky Sound 1995.
5. Ynes Guevara, Altar, beautifying understanding
Ashburton Art Gallery, 327 West St. Till June 7.
Timaru-based Ynes Guevara brings an evocative presence to the seemingly forever-changing crimson purple tonalities of her paintings, described by the artist as an exploration of magical and imaginary feminine archetypes. In paintings that visually bounce possibilities back at one another, Altar, beautifying understanding assumes various manifestations, multitasking as wall-relief sculptures, their refined silhouetted figures and worlds collectively revealing their open-ended possibilities.
6. Richard Elderton, Aida _
City Art Depot, 96 Disraeli St, Christchurch. May 21 to June 10.
Born in Japan, Richard Elderton acknowledges his interest in 19th century Japonisme and wayo secchu (bringing together traditional Japanese and Western influences), his still-life paintings as much about the measured relationships between objects and the spaces they occupy as they are about Elderton’s modulation of light, colour and the presence of his mark-making and painterly surfaces.
7. Karl Fritsch, Lisa Walker and Brenda Nightingale,We Did All These Landscapes
Stoddart Cottage, 2 Waipapa Ave, Diamond Harbour. Till May 26.
Internationally renowned contemporary jewellers Karl Fritsch and Lisa Walker were artistsin-residence in April at Stoddart Cottage in Diamond Harbour, also working with Banks Peninsula artist Brenda Nightingale. Working across traditions of jewellery, painting and embroidery, they present an exhibition of new works from their residency. Artists’ talk today, 2pm to 3pm.
8. Group Exhibition, To Gaza with Love
Eastside Gallery, 388 Worcester St, Linwood, Christchurch. May 20 to June 15.
Eastside Gallery hosts a group exhibition in various media with works from more than 20 local artists, donating paintings and sculptural works as a fundraiser and expression of love and support for children in dire circumstances in Gaza. Proceeds to Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
9. Roseanne Jones, Sheelagh McHaffie, Maria Lee and Roezy Thorn, Objectify
Art Hole, 336 St Asaph St, Christ-church. Till May 5, 11am to 2pm.
Objectify is a group exhibition that is pre-emptive and confronting, the participating artists according prominence to the female form, from sensual fine art nudes to more sexually charged erotic and fetish themes. Twenty per cent of sales will be donated to the Breast Cancer Foundation. (For mature audiences only.)
10. Cora-Allan: Encountering Aotearoa,
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Cnr Worcester Blvd and Montreal St. Till August 25.
Make the time to walk through CoraAllan’s Encountering Aotearoa and feel the genuinely unanticipated warmth and welcome of her works, their materials and tangible presence in the space of the Ravenscar and W A Sutton galleries. Researching the lost art of Niuean traditional bark cloth painting, Hiapo, Cora-Allan describes it as bringing “its own presence to the work … with a strong sense of the Pacific”.