The future for truck driver licensing: What you need to know

At the Australian Trucking Association’s recent Trucking Australia 24 conference, held in Canberra, two officers from Austroads and road transport industry identity, Ron Finemore, brought ATA delegates up to date with licence uniformity progress. The panel was introduced by the ATA’s Steve Shearer.

“Austroads is the association of governments with transport responsibilities: the states and territories in Australia, as well as the New Zealand Transport Agency,” said Austroads’ Paul Davies.

“The National Heavy Vehicle Driver Competency Framework was originally approved by transport ministers a little over 10 years ago, but it has only been implemented in four jurisdictions…to a certain degree.

“A review was initiated in 2016 by transport ministers, but in progressing changes to the framework, Austroads was concerned that the availability of professional drivers was not compromised; the use of higher productivity vehicles was not compromised and the capacity for people to use a heavy vehicle driver licence for non-commercial purposes was not compromised.”

Mr Davies said that the primary objective of the review of the framework was to reduce road trauma, but, under the current system, licensing wasn't aligned to key risks and training was inconsistent across Australia.

Austroads developed a consultation regulation impact statement and received 250 submissions, from driver trainers, drivers and industry. Obviously, Austroads was told many things, but the consistent message was that supervised driver training leads to more confident and safer drivers.

“The current tenure model, whereby you wait 12 months before you're eligible to get to the next licence, doesn't contribute to building experience,” said Mr Davies.

“As someone put it very neatly, sitting on a couch for a year doesn't make you ready for the next vehicle.

“There was also concern that some of the drivers holding multi-combination license weren't really capable of driving these vehicles and further concern with some very short driver training courses being offered.

“Many drivers – I certainly won't say all – but many drivers aren't skilled at things like load restraint, coupling and uncoupling of trailers, reversing and steep hill descents.”

Austroads also asked Monash University Accident Research Centre to do some research into licensing and crash risks, where it found a few key points.

A big alignment was that driver history was related to heavy vehicle crash risk: a history of driving offences, or a history of crashing a heavy vehicle, particularly if coupled with a driving offence. Another consistent factor was limited experience on the road.

In December 2023 Transport ministers decided in principle to approve specific changes and there are five key areas of change:  managing the individual driver risk; strengthening the skills and knowledge development in training; behind-the-wheel experience and training; introducing experience-based progression options for licensing and improved driver-trainer governance.

Ministers agreed that Australia should continue investigating the ineligibility of people who have had serious driving offences that have led to licence disqualifications or suspensions, so that they wouldn't be able to upgrade their heavy vehicle driver licence for two years.

For young drivers, Austroads recognised that the pathway into the industry is a challenge and didn't want to make it a bigger hurdle, so began working on a ‘pilot’ for younger drivers.

“In terms of behind-the-wheel training, minimum time behind the wheel should include around six to eight hours for rigid licence classes and around six to ten hours for combination classes,” said Paul Davies.

“I know that's not very much, but current minimums (time behind the wheel) don't exist.

“This is setting a base and certainly there are good trainers out there who offer much better.

“As well, there’s more detail in the competency elements – around 180 elements – so much more fine-grained detail.

“You can't teach (those elements) in a morning and therefore it will help reduce the number of those unusually short courses that don't leave (students) confident and ready.”

Paul Davies said that common training materials that Austroads will develop with its members will help drive consistency in training around the country. Standard online content is to be developed nationally, so that people can be confident that a driver trained in one place is going to have training similar to someone trained elsewhere.

Experience-based, licence-progression options retain the present situation, where a driver holds a licence for 12 months and then is eligible to go for the next class.

In addition to that, bringing in experience-based pathways that recognise time behind the wheel matters, a driver won't need to wait 12 months before progressing to the next class of heavy vehicle. This progression option differentiates those who “sit on the couch for a year” versus those who are actually working behind the wheel, who can progress a lot faster.

“A supervision program will allow expedited pathways for people entering the industry and potentially remove a lot of the hurdles for getting new people in,” said Paul Davies.

“At present (progressing) from a medium rigid to a multi-combination takes two years, and it doesn't matter how often you drive.

“In some areas, you can go from a heavy rigid straight to a multi-combination as well.

“In that period, you might drive 2000 hours, or you might not drive [a truck at all].”

Paul Davies said that the hope is that drivers will be able to get from a medium rigid to a multi-combination in as little as a year by demonstrating experience as they go. For those in the supervision program pathway, twice as fast again – potentially from not having a heavy vehicle licence to being licensed to drive multi-combinations within six months.

The hope is that the combination of supervised training and on-the-job experience will help alleviate some of the driver shortage challenges.

On the subject of driver trainer governance, Paul Davies said that jurisdictions determine whether training and assessment is in-sourced and outsourced and jurisdictions manage the outsourced training providers. Training materials and programs are developed by the trainer, so there's a lot of inconsistency.

Also, course lengths are subject to commercial considerations and the pressure is on trainers to cut course length and cost.

The new framework proposes that jurisdictions will continue to maintain their outsourced and in-sourced modelling and the desired nationally consistent approach will probably be more a harmonised approach.

Judy Oswin is the Austroads project director for implementing those reforms.

“Paul talked about the young driver pilot,” said Judy Oswin. “Industry is keen to get young people into (road transport), but they do have a higher crash risk.

“So we need to look at what we could possibly do to mitigate that risk (including) developing a pilot program, or a couple of different pilot programs.

“There's a fair bit of work in designing possible pilot programs and, importantly, we'll need to evaluate those programs.

“We'll need to follow these people through the pilot programs, and then we're going to need to evaluate the safety outcomes of people who participate in those programs.

“I think we're looking at up to 10 years before we know whether they've worked, but …  we've got to start somewhere.”

On the subject of supplementing Australian truck drivers with those from overseas countries, Judy Oswin dispelled the myth that overseas licensed heavy truck drivers are over-represented in accidents.

“We don't have a lot of evidence, but what there is doesn't point to greater issues of safety with overseas drivers,” said Judy Oswin.

“One state looked at crash rates over the 2014 to 2020 period and less than a quarter of a percent of the crashes that involved injuries were by people who were on an overseas licence.

“Australia has a system whereby we recognise some countries who have light vehicle standards that are similar to ours, including Canada and the UK and drivers who come from recognised countries actually had a lower crash risk than people from that home state.

“However, there was some elevated risk where people had come from non-recognised countries.”

Judy Oswin said that overseas-licensed drivers can drive the same class of vehicle that they're allowed to drive in that overseas country. The period of that license validity currently varies, but there's been a recent agreement by states and territories to move to a six-month requirement.

What’s under consideration are some limitations on driving a heavy vehicle on an overseas licence.

Ms Oswin also pointed out that Monash research established that driver inexperience and a recent history of driving offences are ‘markers’. There's a 30-70 percent increased risk of someone being involved in a heavy vehicle crash, if they've been banned from driving in the previous two years. The more offences that people have, the higher likelihood that they will be involved in a heavy vehicle crash.

“What's most important is that the highest crash rate was for people who were on provisional or probationary licences:  young drivers have a 45-90 percent increased chance … of being involved in a heavy vehicle crash where they've progressed quickly.”

“Ron Finemore Transport currently operates 290 prime movers and 700-odd pieces of equipment and Ron's a man who never leaves you wondering what he's thinking - which is good,” said Steve Shearer, in introducing Ron Finemore to the stage.

Ron Finemore pointed out that one of the principal sources for young truck drivers in the past was kids who accompanied their parents in the family truck. Many Finemores’ drivers would like to introduce their kids to truck driving, but WorkSafe conditions make that impossible.

“We really need to have the pathway … allowing the learner truck driver to drive with a supervising driver,” said Mr Finemore. “The same as a car driver can get an L permit at 16.

“Why can't we do the same thing with truck leaner drivers, getting a permit for 12 months beforehand?

“Some of us have tried very hard, but we've got to have one message from many voices … across Australia otherwise, it will fail when it gets to the NTC, Austroads and National Heavy Vehicle Regulator.”

On the subject of overseas-sourced truck drivers, Ron Finemore can speak with authority, because he’s been employing large numbers of them for more than 10 years.

“They have to have an Australian licence and (firstly) they do buddy runs … and the buddy drivers get paid a higher level of money to take people with them and sign off on them.”

Trucksales will monitor progress of the proposed licensing laws over the coming months of federal and state deliberations.