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New Trucking Laws - Chain of responsibility gets longer |
New road transport laws enforce uniform national mass, dimension and loading requirements for heavy vehicles, and impose new obligations on those involved in transporting road freight, even extending to those packing and loading vehicles. |
The new laws apply to any vehicle with a gross mass greater than 4.5 tonnes, and to some smaller vehicles at times. |
At the core of the new laws is the concept of a 'chain of responsibility'. All parties with responsibility for actions or inactions which affect compliance with the relevant requirements are now legally accountable if they fail to discharge their responsibility. |
The laws seek to address widely held concerns that while transport operators and their customers have had strong financial incentives to breach regulations on speed, driving hours and overloading, drivers bore a disproportionate share of the penalties. The responsibility now rests with those who are best able to control, and have the potential to gain from, non-compliant behaviour. |
It is simply no longer possible for a company shipping goods to expect road carriers to speed to meet deadlines or to push down unit costs by overloading trucks without now facing substantial liability themselves. |
For example, one of the new requirements is that operators have a duty to supply a driver with a complying container weight declaration. Drivers will have a duty to sight the declaration before commencing a journey. An error recording the weight of goods in a container can lead to prosecution. |
This issue was raised by a delegate at the recent NSW Farmers Association AGM who argued that typographical errors in weight calculation could occur. However, the legislation provides a defence in those circumstances, provided it can be shown that all reasonable steps were taken to avoid a mistake. |
The new laws extend liability for offences, making it clear that action can be taken against any or all persons, including company directors and managers. An employer will also be liable for any relevant road-law offence committed by an employee. |
The laws also contain protection for whistleblowers. It will be an offence for an employer to dismiss or act to the detriment of an employee or contractor because that person has given information or complained about a breach of a relevant road law. |
