A commercial driver is subject to higher medical licensing standards than the average motorist
I don’t need to tell my readers here that driving a heavy vehicle isn’t easy. Once you get past the basics of size and fatigue, there are the pressure elements that badly driven cars, business and regulators add on top of the day-to-day work.
With all that in mind, it’s important for drivers and owner-operators to keep on top of their health so that they can go the distance. What I wanted to flag today is that the higher health demands of the work that you do sound in higher health requirements legally for heavy vehicle drivers, and to give you a few things to be aware of around medical licencing and reporting.
There are two sets of medical standards for drivers in Australia – one for private drivers and a higher one for commercial drivers. This second category catches MR licences and above, as well as drivers with public passenger or dangerous goods accreditation, or accreditation under the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme.
Being caught by that second category means:
1. You have a legal responsibility not to drive if you are unfit to do so
2. You are under an obligation to report to your local licencing authority (in New South Wales it’s Transport for NSW) any health condition that might affect your ability to drive safely.
What this means in practice is that if you’re injured in a way that may affect your driving, for example you break your leg, or have an internal episode like a stroke or epileptic fit, or a part of your body deteriorates over time like your eyesight, then it’s important to have a conversation as early as possible with your doctor about medical licensing. By making your doctor aware that you are a commercial driver – so your licence is your livelihood and you fall under the higher medical standards – you can use them to understand the specific requirements as they apply to your condition. They can help you with reporting the problem in a way that can enable you to continue driving.
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While it may seem tempting to hide a medical problem so as not to risk your licence, or to put off dealing with it until it gets worse, in the long run this could lead to more trouble. In our experience, often when a condition or injury is managed early by medical professionals, they, together with the team of experts that the licensing authorities use, can put a plan in place for medication, monitoring, assessment and reporting that will keep a driver on the road longer and, importantly, safer.
Licence suspension
I would be kidding myself and lying to you if I didn’t say that sometimes reporting medical conditions does lead to the suspension of licenses, either permanently or for long periods of time. If you don’t agree with a decision made by the authorities about your fitness to drive, this can be challenged in court and is sometimes resolved with negotiations between lawyers and doctors behind the scenes.
Some time ago, Austroads produced a guidebook on medical licencing, called Assessing Fitness to Drive. This book is available online. It is divided into information and requirements for licencing drivers with certain conditions and covers everything. Each section was written by the leading doctors on that condition, with road safety as the primary concern.
The starting point, if you are concerned that a medical condition of yours might impact on your licence, is to understand what the guidebook says about it. Your treating doctor should be able to assist you with this. But if things are unclear, please feel free to call one of the lawyers at Ainsley Law for personalised advice.
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*SARAH MARINOVIC is a principal solicitor at Ainsley Law – a firm dedicated to traffic and heavy vehicle law. She has focused on this expertise for over a decade, having started her career prosecuting for the RMS, and then using that experience as a defence lawyer helping professional drivers and truck owners. For more information email Sarah at sarah@ainsleylaw.com.au or phone 0416 224 601.