Opinion: DIY safety

Veteran truck driver and journalist Bruce Honeywill adds to the thorny and ongoing debate surrounding safety in the Australian road freight industry…

Linfox is the latest corporation to to adopt a safety management program that goes beyond industry regulations and enforcement.

Millionaire founder and the man whose business card cites his occupation as ‘truck driver’, Lindsay Fox, has called for the installation of black boxes in all Linfox linehaul vehicles.

Linfox chief executive Michael Byrne has been reported (AAP) as saying Linfox is considering leaving major industry organisations. He says Linfox’s standards go beyond industry expectations. He says this puts Linfox at odds with other operators and the organisations that represent them.

But there are many fleets ahead of Linfox in this trend towards do-it-yourself safety. The upward pressures of insurance costs, the requirement for prime contractors to be seen as good corporate citizens and systemic safety strategies in large transport corporations are all forcing a second tier of monitoring and safety.

Many fleets and sub-contractors have embraced DIY safety for some time. Many see the approach to systems of safety, fatigue management and regulatory enforcement as two tiered. Two tiers? The separation between clumsy State enforcement and in-house safety through monitoring is a gap as broad as Bass Strait.

On one side there are the regulatory agencies and the introduction of the HVNL (Heavy Vehicle National Law) this year. These are the bureaucrats and their instruments delivered through regulations and enforcement, controlling fatigue by work diaries and varied levels of fatigue management. The transport associations pay homage, at least by word, to this approach.

And on the other side there’s the increasing use of telematics…

I drive a truck. Full time. My employers can check in real time what I am doing, what speed I am travelling at, the times I have been driving. If the truck is idling while I take a comfort stop, they know – if they wanted to. If they had a reason, they can access a website to view a 10-second video of me driving a couple of minutes earlier, before receiving the video through the magic of satellite technology. They can check if I’m wearing a seat belt.

If I’m grossing 130 tonnes coming through the Mt Isa hills and I let the unit drift over the 90km/h speed limit an alarm goes off in some distant monitoring office and I get an email telling me that I was driving at 98km/h for eight seconds. Too many of these notifications and my future employment is in doubt. And not a police officer in sight.

Big Brother? Yes, but this is a part of life for many drivers today. The world of filling out work diaries and playing the games of enforcement and evasion on the road is from another, archaic time.

We’ve had technologies to monitor driving times and behaviour for 30 years. But still the argument goes on: industry organisations, fleet owners and the major corporations confuse the public and mainstream media with double-speak. Ordinary confused people whose wish is only for safer roads.

The daily arguments about enforcement and fatigue management continue. We’ve heard it all before. It could be stopped overnight. It could have been stopped 30 years ago. Stopped by embracing reality and the economic requirements society expects of road transport (get my avocados to Melbourne, fresh and on time).

Some of the big fleets are admitting this reality, taking it into their own hands. There is economic benefit in improved and monitored safety as part of everyday life. Many still hate the idea but it seems big Lindsay thinks it’s a step in the right direction.

Opinion: DIY safety

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