TA2018: Safety in the spotlight

The Australian Trucking Association's annual Trucking Australia conference was held over April 18-20 in and around Canberra's National Convention Centre, with around 400 delegates attending a series of forums that placed the major theme of safety firmly at the forefront of proceedings.

In his opening address to delegates, ATA Chair Geoff Crouch said there was still much to be done in terms of addressing the national road toll, which saw 1225 lives lost in 2017.

"Australians would not accept this number of deaths it they involved planes or trains," he said.

"There would be Royal Commissions and ministerial heads would roll. Yet we accept this misery of grief and loss of potential, year after year. The Australian Trucking Association and our member organisations have long argued that the only acceptable number of fatal and serious injury crashes on our roads is zero. But it needs to be more than just a talking point.

"We told a review earlier this year that Government should make this target formal, and that they must work towards it. It won't be easy to get close, but the difficulty of the task is simply no excuse not to be ambitious.

"Governments, light vehicle and car drivers and our industry must change how we do things. We need to encourage the whole industry to follow the example set by all of us who are here today, and take responsibility for our safety and that of all road users.

"The alternative is that we will end up with regulations that won't increase safety, such as operator licencing or another Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, as ministers hunt for solutions while they are on camera talking to journalists.

"And then, no doubt, we will continue to get the blame when those policies don't work."

ATSB input?
Mr Crouch called for a better system of road crash investigation, highlighting the 'no-blame' investigations carried out for major accidents in the aviation, rail and marine spheres by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

"We say the ATSB should also carry out safety investigations into serious truck crashes and identify if there may be lessons to be learned," he said, while emphasising that such investigations would have to run in parallel with traditional police investigations and coronial inquiries.

Mr Crouch estimated that the cost to Government of such a measure would run to approximately $5m per year.

"A trivial amount, considering the potential benefits," he said.

Mr Crouch welcomed the looming changes to the Heavy Vehicle National Law, due to come online mid-2018.

"We need these reforms, because too many of our large customers still think they can crunch their supply-chain costs, and that safety is someone else's problem," he said.

Fatigue innovation
TA2018 also hosted the industry's first Fatigue Hack, a brainstorming session by over 50 of the country's brightest minds to deliver innovative measures aimed at improving road safety, while a further session explored the efforts of students of Melbourne's Swinburne University to reposition the ATA's Safety Truck message.

"The ATA is in the process of redesigning the educational strategy of the Safety Truck to place a higher emphasis on targeting the 17 to 25 age demographic," he said.

"These are the ones using the road now, not in 10 years' time. These are the users that, we believe, will greatly benefit from being educated about how to use the road with heavy vehicles."

Previously the ATA Safety Truck had focussed its efforts on the education of primary school children. The new ATA Safety Truck, also the 60,000th Volvo truck manufactured in Australia, was parked at the entrance of TA2018 for the duration of the conference.

Safety Summit
TA2018 also saw delegates take part in a Safety Summit, with addresses by NSW Chief Inspector Phil Brooks, ATSB Commissioner Carolyn Walsh, and President of the national road safety initiative, SarahGroup. Following this two-hour session, Mr Crouch said a stand-alone two-day Safety Summit would be held at some point in the year ahead, to better address this major issue.

"We need to increase our membership and speak with one voice, because our industry and our people are too important to waste time on arguing," he said.

"Delegates, we have 211,500 staff to look after. We have the freight of an entire continent to move. I know that we will do it more safely, and more productively, every year with your support."

Trucksales.com.au will provide comprehensive coverage of the Trucking Australia 2018 conference over the week ahead.