The pedantic powers of police must be kerbed to stop the financial burden on truckies’ families
A letter to the Police Commissioners of Australia: Dear sirs and madams, I am an interstate truckie and have been for many years. I have now travelled over six million kilometres in mainly B-doubles across every state in Australia, bar Tassie. I have met and dealt with some excellent and understanding police and similar staff of road authorities but have met some of both groups who do not meet these high laurels or what I would hope would be your standards of both operation and professionalism.
We now have the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) taking over those state road authorities. While we do not yet have a fully national set of rules, we are closer with virtually the eastern seaboard NHVR rule set and a western and Northern Territory one by default. We are all awaiting the results of the current Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) review and a Senate Inquiry into a Safe and Sustainable Road Transport Industry.
Both have received many written, oral and online submissions seeking many things, but a distinct and often recurring theme has been the inflexibility of the logbook. The penalties often handed out from such rules and the outright ridiculous fines handed out to truckies, often for things that have nothing to do with road safety and often by police.
Your officers have a great responsibility, they deal with rapists and murderers and all of those who break the law, but it seems sometimes that mindset carries over into dealings with truckies.
Minor mistakes
We live on the road, away from our families, often without sufficient facilities like enough decent rest areas and shade and toilets etc and often have our lives risked by those in cars who cannot wait one minute to save their own lives.
I agree, we are certainly not all perfect. We are human and we do make mistakes in our logbooks, but should leaving off a date or missing one line incur a massive fine? Then when we want to dispute the true need and justification of that fine, often issued by your officers, it is not simple and fair justice to seek a review, let alone attend to court in another state at a large cost in not just lost wages, but legal fees and other costs as well. It seems some of your officers think we can simply pay or “You can fight it in court” which in all fairness is not true justice nor a good use of our legal system.
The reason for contacting you is twofold. Because of the hopefully few of your officers who seem to enjoy writing tickets for truckies over minor breaches but seem very busy from the number of complaints I receive as our associations do so as well. I put forth a paper asking for police powers to enforce the HVNL be removed. This is until such times as these reviews are finished and released. We hope some of those minor breaches and horrendous fines for things that have nothing to do with road safety will be removed or, at least, brought to a reasonable level and a fair system made available for us to challenge such fines.
While we certainly recognise your officers’ legal ability to issue traffic fines for all, not all of them have the same awareness and training given to them to, I believe, police and fully understand the HVNL in the intent it is aimed, to improve road safety. Some it seems, simply don’t want to treat us as humans. People who might make a minor error.
While that document is a tall ask, it is genuine in its intent. The absolute least we will accept is that any HVNL fines issued by police be adjudicated by the NHVR, not simply another person who does not have to do the job we do simply saying, “Sorry, we cannot withdraw that fine”, no matter how good our argument might be that it is unfair and or unjust.
Education before enforcement
The NHVR is saying once it controls all the road authorities on-road staff their focus will be firstly education before enforcement. We all accept there are those who do intend to break the law and most will accept they should be punished. But leaving a date off a page or a line off a logbook should not cost my family a week’s wages and then should not cost even more to allow me the chance to defend myself, supposedly a right of our justice system.
What I am asking of you as the Police Commissioners is, will you follow that intent from the NHVR, recognising some of the logbook rules and penalties as, if not flawed, certainly as overzealous and not improving road safety? Or is it just simply giving some of your officers more things (and sometimes easier things) to punish us for?
The NHVR has no control over the activities of police, nor should they in normal traffic matters or in normal life. However, you are policing the HVNL which does not apply to all, only truck drivers, and not all your officers are fully trained in its entirety. We struggle with its 600 plus pages of rules and penalties. Many will say if it needs near 30 pages of instruction in the front of each book it is way too complex for us, let alone others who do not have to live by it.
May I then ask of you as Police Commissioners, will you instruct your officers to at the very least, consider education before enforcement? And to consider warnings for those unjust laws and penalties that simply take away our ability to manage our fatigue and operate safely on our roads to deliver the food and fuel and clothes you all use the same as other Australians?
Will you give us a fair go when we make a mistake? We are not killers; we want to get home safely to our families after each trip, as do your officers, but someone has to direct them to consider this. Will you? I would welcome your replies.
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*ROD HANNIFEY, a transport safety advocate, has been involved in raising the profile of the industry, conducting highway truck audits, the Blue Reflector Trial for informal parking bays on the Newell, the ‘Truckies on Road Code’, the national 1800 number for road repairs proposal, and the Better Roadside Rest Areas Group. Contact Rod on 0428 120 560, e-mail rod.hannifey@bigpond.com or visit www.truckright.com.au