ATA responds to Four Corners

The ATA has responded to the recent Four Corners program examining the Australian truck industry, This Trucking Life

The Australian Trucking Association has acknowledged the recent Four Corners program This Trucking Life (aired on ABC1 on Monday, February 3, 2014), calling for transport company executives to be held to account for poor vehicle maintenance.

In response to the program, ATA Chairman David Simon highlighted how current ‘chain of responsibility’ laws don’t extend to vehicle maintenance.

“In tough times it is easy for business executives to cut back on maintenance spending in the belief that it won’t affect safety – for a while,” he said.

“There are special road transport laws – called the chain of responsibility laws – that impose safety obligations on businesses, company directors and executives. They only apply to speed management, fatigue, vehicle mass, vehicle dimensions and load restraint. They don’t apply to maintenance.

“The ATA and its members have called on governments to extend the chain of responsibility concept to vehicle maintenance.

“This would compel businesses and executives to take reasonable steps to ensure that trucks are maintained properly; for example, by ensuring that maintenance staff have adequate budgets, resources and training.”

Simon also drew attention to the ATA’s recent submission to the Federal Government in which it recommended the allocation of funding to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) to establish a database of coronial road safety recommendations and major heavy vehicle accidents.

The Four Corners program, assembled by ABC journalist Stephen Long, focussed on truck maintenance in the wake of the Cootes Transport tanker accident in Sydney in early October 2013, in which two people died. It also looked at fatigue management laws, the use of prohibited drugs among truck drivers, and the general pressures on heavy-vehicle drivers to make ends meet.

However, Simon says the industry has made great strides in road safety in recent years.

“Statistics from Australia’s leading truck insurer, NTI, show the rate of serious crashes per thousand trucks and trailers improved 42.7 per cent between 2003 and 2011,” he said.

“More generally, Australia’s road toll has fallen to historic lows. In Victoria and NSW, the road toll last year was the lowest since 1924.

“Every death on the road is a tragedy. We all need to do more. But we also need to recognise how far the industry has come already,” he said.

ATA responds to Four Corners

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