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LOOKING FOR 21ST CENTURY RULES
NTC about how any new law would be able to achieve that aim. Representing the trucking industry on that panel were South Australian trucking operator, Sharon Middleton as well as Gary Mahon, CEO at the Queensland Trucking Association and Louise Bilato, who performs a similar role in the Northern Territory.
After the first consultation period ended, the NTC drafted a long and complex document, the Consultation Regulation Impact Statement (RIS), a paper which runs out to 192 pages. This document is being pored over by stakeholders who are being invited to
make submissions to the NTC before the final drafting of the new law takes place. Submissions have to reach the NTC by October 25, 2020.
This is the document which many, in both the authorities and those representing the trucking industry’s interests, will be ploughing through to get a handle on how the future HVNL may affect their interests.
For the rest of us, the job of trying to get a full sense of the implications of all of the bureaucratic language being used may be above our pay scale. For those with a shorter attention span, the NTC have also published a 24-page HVNL 2.0 scenario document which is aimed at showing the industry what the new law could, but does not have to, look like.
According to HVNL 2.0, the future HVNL should be a modern law that provides a flexible, risk-based regulatory framework to ensure the safe and efficient operation of heavy vehicles on Australian roads. It should also empower industry and government to take advantage of future innovation and technology opportunities to improve safety and reduce costs to benefit the community, industry and governments.
This emphasis on taking a risk-based approach to regulation is a mantra we have been hearing from the NHVR in recent years and points to a more collaborative approach to the problem rather than the adversarial philosophy behind the law in the past.
“Most stakeholders told us that what the law regulates should remain largely the same in the broader regulatory context, and that the problems with the HVNL relate to the methods of the law and how it regulates heavy vehicles,” says HVN L 2.0.
On the subject of operator accreditation, the approach is to look
at mutual recognition on the part of the various accreditation schemes. On the sticky topic of access, the principle is set out for the rules to seek notices and as-of-right authorisation for vehicles to use certain routes and reserve more difficult-to-get permits only for special cases. This would be an extension of what has been happening for some classes of trucks in recent years, but does embed the concept in the basic law.
The future envisaged in this document sees a world with multiple layers of assurance. Some operators will be able to live in a landscape similar to the current regime with simple rules and limits. The paper also envisages more layers of assurance for operators willing to go further down the accreditation and assurance track, in return for higher productivity vehicles or working practices.
The emphasis is planned to be on risk-based regulation, where the HVNL uses the standards operators should meet on – things like assurance, hours rules, mass and dimension, vehicle
standards and livestock handling. These standards themselves will not be included in the law. They will be able to be amended by ministerial sign off. There is also room to increase the use of codes of practice to set parameters for industry behaviour.
The way it will work in this case and in many other areas which it covers, is that duties on the part of those involved will be set out in the HVNL. However, regulations, standards and codes of practice, which can be amended and improved easily, will be designed as options enabling operators to comply with those duties.
The scenario envisaged will create a new regulatory landscape, with the operator able to choose a route to compliance. At the most basic level, they could run combinations based on the prescriptive rules and masses, working under a simple standard hours-type arrangement.
At the other end of the spectrum, an operator could fit approved (by the NHVR) fatigue mitigation technology to run a more innovative driving hours regime. They could also fit monitoring equipment, also certified by the NHVR to provide route and mass assurance to the road authorities in return for running at higher masses where possible.
As long as the way the operation is run and equipped meets the duties laid out in the HVNL around public safety, public amenity, environmental and infrastructure impacts, productivity, efficiency and innovation, the way those rules are met will be down to authorities like the NHVR. The authorities will have the ability to change these parameters over time to keep up with a developing trucking industry and the needs of a changing economic landscape.
These basic principles are not currently set in stone and stakeholders wishing to make a comment or suggestion, based on the information in HVNL 2.0 (available at https://buff. ly/3ioQoLH ) or the longer RIS (available at https://buff.ly/3abIO4d) need to get their submissions into the NTC before October 25, 2020.
IMPACT OF THE Coronavirus Pandemic
The ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been incredibly disruptive to the heavy vehicle industry, with 2020 presenting challenges few of us anticipated.
Through this disruption, the heavy vehicle industry has continued to demonstrate how integral it is to our national economy and the everyday lives of almost all Australians. In learning to work within the confines of health restrictions, our industry has shown how willing it is to change, innovate and adapt to the new circumstances that we are facing.
The majority of industry has taken to these changes admirably, quickly incorporating cabin hygiene, extra PPE and face-mask protocol into truckie safety briefings and being flexible as things change. For an industry that is heavily paper-based there has been a commendable willingness to work through the ever – changing border and permit systems and to use digital technology to ensure drivers have the right passes, at the right times.
This readiness to embrace digital change didn’t come as a surprise to me, having seen the exciting things being implemented across the industry to enhance both safety and productivity on our roads.
The embrace of technology by industry is increasingly prevalent, from adoption of innovative fatigue-detection technology to the ever-improving feats being achieved by new PBS approved vehicles.
We recently celebrated 10,000 innovative PBS heavy vehicle combinations hitting Australian roads, demonstrating the success of the world-leading PBS scheme.
PBS-approved combinations now make up one-in-five new relevant vehicle types (vehicles with a corresponding PBS combination) more than double that of five years ago.
This increase has led to improved safety outcomes, such as 46 per cent fewer crashes when com pared with conventional vehicles, and productivity gains of up to 30 per cent by reducing truck trips on our roads.
The continued growth of the PBS scheme shows industry’s appetite for more modern technology, and the desire to be safer and more innovative operators. At the NHVR, we are committed to continuing the success of the scheme, including building a second-generation PBS regulatory framework.
This PBS 2.0 will focus on streamlining access and approval decisions for PBS vehicles, ensuring national and local policy settings are able to support the uptake and adoption of safer and more productive vehicles, rather than discourage them.
While we are supporting the industry to be more technology-driven, that focus is also internal.
We know that technology can make the NHVR smarter and more efficient for the benefit of the whole industry and I want to ensure that we take advantage of any opportunity in this space.
As the pandemic began to escalate, we took a look at the resources we already had at our disposal and thought about how we could use them to fit the changing times.
For example the NHVR Route Planner, which has become an important and evolving part of our digital resources, now has a new map layer that includes open service centres and truck-friendly COVID19 testing centres, providing simple access
to national information about amenities and essential health services while drivers are on the road.
We also recently completed the roll out of our Regulatory Compliance Mobility Solution (RCMS) to our safety and compliance officers in South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, which has already been implemented successfully in Victoria.
The RCMS replaces the current paper-based system, allowing our officers to make better, more informed decisions in a more efficient way, keeping
roads safe for all users.
The RCMS program has improved productivity and efficiency at the roadside in Victoria and operators will start to see these improvements flow on to other states.
For example, the technology will make records available immediately to authorised officers in other locations and over time low-risk operators and vehicles will experience fewer and shorter intercepts and a more seamless experience across state and territory boundaries.
This emphasis on risk-based regulation and enforcement is a crucial focus for the NHVR and technology plays a critical role in how we achieve that goal.
Whether it’s through targeted operations or proactively working with businesses to prevent incidents before they happen, we are increasingly using intelligence to inform intervention in the supply chain based on risk.
Across the board, we are acknowledging those operators that consistently prioritise safety and concentrating on those that present risks to other road users, ultimately delivering a better, safer industry for everyone.
As we move through a year that has thrown up some of the biggest challenges our industry and our country have ever faced, the NHVR is here to support and work with operators to innovate and come out of this stronger than ever.
