The National Transport Commission has called on the industry to provide feedback to identify potential changes to the priority assessment of infringements under Heavy Vehicle National Law.
It is asking industry stakeholders to help assess the current penalties and demerit points given out for every offence under HVNL and any lower-order offences in order to determine whether any need to be reclassified.
The NTC is hoping to categorise ‘priority offences’, which require longer periods of assessment and discussion before penalties can be handed out.
The Commission is asking industry figures and stakeholders to examine three factors of offences and their punishments:
- Disproportionality: are the penalty amounts significantly greater than the impact that the breach or offence has?
- Consistency: is the penalty consistent with similar offences?
- Deterrence: does the current penalty do enough to deter offenders from doing so again?
The NTC has provided a feedback sheet which can be accessed here on the HVIA website where you can give feedback regarding HVNL penalties.
An impact statement released in October presented a number of options to make the enforcement of road regulation fairer, including:
- Limiting the timeframe for issuing work and rest breach infringements
- Introducing a risk-based approach to enforcement
- Enabling a review of fines for ‘trifling’ work diary offences
- Providing drivers with an opportunity to challenge fines for minor administrative errors
- Giving authorised officers broader abilities to issue formal warnings rather than fines
- Providing the option for formal education to be issued by authorised officers instead of traditional compliance practices.