Trucking Industry Safety Takes A Back Seat

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Police line do not cross
Police message not getting through to trucking. The police have recently expressed their concern over the large number of trucking safety breaches. The authorities have conducted a blitz which revealed disturbing results. The blitz found that truckies are still indulging in dangerous behaviour, placing the lives of road users at risk. The blitz, conducted in New South Wales found that many vehicles were speeding, at over 20km over the limit. While most members of the industry are adhering to safety regulations there are still a small handful of truck operators flouting safety laws. The speeding offenders were given infringements notices and their vehicles handed over to have their speed limiters checked. Another issue that the police’s exercise raised was that of drug possession and drug driving. The post goes on to state:
  • Police message not getting through to trucking
  • Recent large-scale police operations against the trucking industry have failed to curb dangerous behaviour in the industry, with authorities expressing concern about continued dangerous driving.
  • New South Wales Police has targeted trucking in recent weeks, with officers detecting a number of vehicles travelling more than 20km/h over the speed limit between July 27 and August 3 throughout the state.
  • In the most recent cases, a B-double was busted travelling 124km/h on the Hume Highway just after 1am on August 3, while a semi-trailer was caught travelling 125km/h on Burley Griffin Way later that day.
  • “Quite obviously, there is a small element of the industry not paying attention to our enforcement activities. While drivers continue to speed, we will continue to mount inspection operations. Be warned, we may also consider the direct targeting of the fleets and companies involved,” Superintendent Stuart Smith says.
  • All drivers caught speeding were handed infringement notices, with police also defecting their vehicles to have their speed limiters checked.
  • “We will now review these recent speeding events to determine what it is we can do with the Roads and Maritime Service (RMS) to increase our inspection and enforcement activities across the state for the benefit of ensuring road safety for all drivers across NSW.”
  • Smith says recent heavy vehicle operations inspected more than 1,200 trucks and found 54 instances of alleged tampering with speed limiters to allow trucks to exceed 100km/h.
  • “A further 539 infringements, breaches, defects and other issues were found. We have also found 10 to be driving drug affected, and charged two with drug possession,” he says.
Source: https://www.fullyloaded.com.au/industry-news/articleid/80519.aspx If there is anything that can be learned from this, it’s that speeding and drug driving need to be rooted out in the industry.  Especially because in New South Wales speeding is the number one cause of road deaths.  About 40 per cent of those who lost their lives on NSW roads did so because of speeding. Statistics have shown that approximately 177 people a year die from speed related crashes in NSW alone and about 75 road users lose their lives due to heavy vehicle crashes. For heavy vehicles speeding is a particularly dangerous practice because it drastically increases the stopping distances needed, which are already high on trucks. The also require bigger distances to safely stop than ordinary passenger vehicles. Speeding is also dangerous for passenger vehicles, but even more so on heavy vehicles because it increases the risk of crashing as well as the severity of the crash. Another issue that has emerged is the problem of drug driving. Drugs have become a problematic issue for the transport industry, with a number of truckies resorting to illegal narcotics as an energy booster and fatigue fighter. Police found a number of truckies in possession of narcotics and a number driving under the influence of drugs. Drivers need to ensure they receive the proper rest and night’s sleep before a journey, to prevent fatigue and the need for drugs.   Drivers consume drugs to keep them awake and then to help them fall asleep, which is an ugly cycle that never ends.  Drivers who take drugs as a quick fix to fatigue are not only endangering their own lives, but those of all other road users as well. Police and authorities will be taking a firm stance against drug driving because the number of lives being lost is unacceptable.
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