Truckies along the Sunshine Coast are concerned about the pressure they are under due to regulations which they say are “unsafe and unnecessary”.
Drivers say they are being dealt an unfair hand as government labels them as “unsafe” despite many truckies having gone over 2 decades without serious accidents.
This is what truckies had to say about the issue according to a post on Bigrigs.com:
Sunshine Coast truckie Trevor Warner says regulations forced upon truck drivers are unsafe and unnecessary.
“Anyone who doesn’t do depot to depot like the big boys can’t legally do the hours,” he told Big Rigs recently. Warner has 20 years experience in the industry and has been “pretty vocal” to politicians about how hard it has become to be a truck driver. He runs fresh produce south to Melbourne, but because of where he lives he cannot drive home after the end of his shift. “Once my hours are up I’m locked down,” he said. Warner said he often had to try to sleep during the day in Brisbane. “I run out of hours at Morayfield, half an hour from home. What do you do? You drive home. “The RTA’s truck stats compared with 2010 ABS figures on external causes of death show truck drivers were twice as likely to die from food poisoning at the roadhouse than in a heavy vehicle accident.” Warner said many drivers who had done the job safely for 20 years or more were now being told by politicians they were unsafe. “If a truck is not being used for a commercial purpose you should be allowed to drive it home. If the load terminates in Brisbane I don’t get paid to drive home.” Now a member of the Long Haul Drivers Association, Warner said he agreed a 12-hour work day with six hours rest would work as long as companies could be made to do the right thing. He said truck companies could not be investigated without truckies getting into trouble first. As soon as a driver “fell on his sword” and admitted he was pushed to do something illegal he was investigated before the company. “It’s just ridiculous,” he said. The hardest part of the job was balancing time frame demands with actual driving times, especially when there were loading delays. Warner agreed safe rates would work on the surface. “It might force freight companies to pay more money,” he said. He also claimed big business had used the science of fatigue to push for laws that placed unreasonable burdens on small operators. Source: https://www.bigrigs.com.auWhether or not the new rules will benefit road safety remains to be seen. However it cannot be denied that one of the most common crashes experienced on Oz roadways are Truck Rollovers, often caused by fatigue this is what government regulations are trying to reduce. Almost every week we hear of a rollover somewhere in the country bringing some or the other highway to a halt. Often the driver will insist that the load has shifted and rolled him over and from his perspective, this is what seems to happen. However the load shifting is a result of the roll over, not the cause. Some of the contributing causes are : the bank of the roadway being travelled on, steepness of the crown of the road or liquid sloshing when driving a tanker (occurs when tankers are filled to 40-70% capacity, and the tanker is not equipped with baffles). Also if the driver approaches a curve or ramp with a speed that is too high, it commonly results in a roll over. Other possible causes are:
- Speed at which you enter the curve or ramp
- You need friction to turn: pavement friction generated by trucks is less than that generated by a passenger car, but the effective friction demand for trucks is higher. Trucks often don’t get the friction they need on smooth road surfaces.
- High crosswinds
- Tight radius turns
- Short deceleration lanes preceding tight radius exits
- Curbs on the outside of curves
- Downgrades leading into ramps
- Unrealistic speed limits for ramps off of high speed highways
- Curves with a dip for drainage purposes
