Article: Road and rail: contrasts in safety

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Road and rail: contrasts in safety

Road and rail: contrasts in safety
by Rail Express — last modified May 09, 2012 02:15 PM
— filed under: Weekly Top Stories, Rail

The recent crackdown on the road transport industry by various enforcement agencies will temporarily reassure the public that something is being done to ensure their safety on our increasingly busy roads, but no doubt it will all be long forgotten when the next inevitable tragedy occurs?
 
Road and rail: contrasts in safety

By Mark Carter

For too long Australia's trucking industry has played the policy bully boy. Continually pushing for self regulation on many aspects of its operations along with exemptions from higher road charging, while all the time riding roughshod over the wider community by continually flouting road rules and regulations.

The trucking industry repeatedly puts these misdemeanours down to a few bad apples, but as a number of recent media reports have indicated, spot checks have found up to 10% of vehicles having speed limiters tampered and other defects. 10% is not a few bad apples, but is a significant part of an industry representing 1 in 10 vehicles being turned into a killing machine by their operators.

Now don't get me wrong, Australia needs a strong and efficient road transport industry. The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) revels in regularly stating the bleeding obvious that rail cannot fulfil many aspects of the land transport task and that we will always be heavily reliant on road transport. Why they should need to keep repeating this mantra is beyond me, as I've never heard anyone state otherwise.

What is annoying is the continual bleating from the ATA about increased charges as though they should somehow be exempt from the general cost increases that the rest of the community has to bear - made all the worse by the political backing they get backing up their shame claims.

The various enforcement agencies dealing with the road transport industry, the police and regulatory authorities, also need a long hard look at themselves. Far too often any significant checking of the trucking industry only seems to occur after the most recent tragedy.

A couple of months ago, acting officer in charge of SAPOL's Traffic Support Branch, Inspector Andrew Thiele, commenting on a joint exercise between South Australia Police's Heavy Vehicle Enforcement Section and the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure (DPTI) to crackdown on truck safety across the state, said it is understood the public has expectations that the police would enforce legislation in relation to heavy vehicle safety.

"We take our obligations very seriously and will continue to hold truck drivers accountable whenever possible and place them before the courts for breaches of the legislation."

Police had intercepted 49 vehicles for roadside checks on both trucks and drivers which found two drivers tested positive to drugs; four breaches for insecure loads; three speed limiters tampered with; and 15 defects with a total of 14 vehicle infringement notices issued.

The crackdown had only occurred subsequent to the high profile tragedy in New South Wales in late January when a speeding truck killed three people which saw most state governments scrambling to demonstrate that they were doing something about the problem.

Seriously, if the Traffic Support Branch were out there regularly doing spot checks on the roads surely we would never be seeing such high levels of non compliance.

The Victorian Government seems to be taking the issue a bit more seriously and has announced that up to 220 additional police officers will be trained in the enforcement of heavy vehicle compliance law enforcement. Officers will receive on the job training to raise their level of expertise in relation to chain of responsibility laws.

Despite Chain of Responsibility legislation being enacted some years back, and given the ongoing level for non compliance in the trucking industry, it is also surprising that we have not heard more about successful prosecutions under this legislation.

The laissez faire attitude of the police in failing to tackle the irregularities of the trucking industry is mirrored in a similar attitude to level crossing incidents in the past, where there has been a reluctance to prosecute. This only started to be turned around following the various initiatives of the rail industry in heightening awareness of level crossing safety.

The rail industry itself recently released the figures for drug and alcohol testing review for 2011 year, during which an astounding 199,897 employee drug and alcohol tests were undertaken.

Of the 199,897 tests conducted, 199,603 returned negative results and only 294 or 0.147% returned a positive reading. With a labour force of 44,210 people, on average each operational employee was tested for drugs or alcohol 4.52 times throughout 2011, 84.73% of the 199,897 tests being carried out at random.

Bryan Nye, chief executive of the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) said that the results show rail's commitment and success in managing risk and safety on the Australian rail network with regards to drug and alcohol.

"Each positive reading receives disciplinary action and is dealt with on a case-by-case basis, all of which aligns to the Rail Safety Act and rail organisation policies," Nye said.

I wonder if we will ever see such transparency from the road transport industry?