In this video, we look at the responsibilities for the transport stage of the Chain of Responsibility for Heavy Vehicles in Australia. The video is shown below, and a transcript after that.
Hi, Today we’re going to be continuing our look at responsibilities for heavy vehicle operators under the chain of responsibility, and today we’re going to be having a closer look at the operator and the driver, i.e. the journey that the heavy vehicle load undertakes. My name is Michael Terry, I’m from a Momentum Safety and Ergonomics and this is Five Minute Safety series.
Okay so continuing on from our previous video where we looked at the consigners, and the loaders and the packers. Now we’re going to assume that the load has already been placed on the truck, and we’re looking at the process of getting it from the consignor to the consignee, and of course there’s going to be responsibilities along the way. You can see by our slide here that the main people who are involved here are going to be operators and drivers. But of course, like everything else we’ve covered there will be additional parties involved, and additional responsibilities. Today we just want to have a closer look at these two, just to give us a feel for the broad responsibilities under this legislation.
Main Parties
Okay so let’s jump on and have a look about who these people might be. And first of all let’s have a look at the operator. So the operator is going to be the party who was responsible for controlling or directing the use of a heavy vehicle, and generally speaking they will be an owner and operator. They might be a carrier or a transporter, that sort of thing. And then of course there is the heavy vehicle driver themselves. This one pretty much speaks for themselves, they’re the person who is behind the wheel of any vehicle exceeding a gross mass of more than 4.5, tonnes. Okay, so as previously we’re going to have a closer look at the two different parties here, from the point of view of three different areas. We’re going to be looking at Mass and dimension limits, we’re going to be looking at the safety of the load, and we’re going to be looking at the possibility of fatigue and speeding creeping into our operation as a key risks there.
Responsibilities: Operator
So, let’s have a look at the operator in relation to mass and dimension limits. Okay, so we can clearly see that the operator is not going to be the person who’s driving the truck, but they are going to have responsibilities for this process and again it’s going to be more related to having the right systems and processes in place. So, if you have a closer look we can see that they are going to be required to ensure that they have suitable and appropriate vehicles for all loads. So if the consignment is a certain type of load the vehicle mass of course match up with that. They do have a responsibility to make sure that the heavy vehicle loads do comply with these relevant mass and dimension limits. And even though they’re not on the job doing that, they do bear that responsibility. And they’re also going to need to make sure that the driver is supplied with the correct documentation, and the driver obviously checks up on this documentation as well, and the things that we’re sort of talking about here might be things like container weight declarations for example. In relation to load safety the operator will of course need to make sure that they have appropriately serviced and maintained equipment for the load restraint for example, and of course they need to have systems in place to show and ensure that this is appropriately checked by either the drivers or the loaders, depending on how the arrangements are put into place that. And finally, looking at fatigue and speeding, again it’s all going to be about the systems that are in place here. So we need to make sure, obviously from the operator’s point of view, that drivers meet regulated driving hours and minimum rest requirements. We need to make sure also that we have systems in place to check for fatigue and appropriate reporting systems for drivers to let the company know if they are becoming fatigued. And the last thing is in relation to speeding, we can do checks in relation to speeding. Some companies obviously will have GPS systems built into their vehicles, but even average drive times and those sorts of things can be used to calculate the likelihood of drivers. excessively speeding in their vehicles.
Responsibilities: Driver
Okay, moving on to the driver and in relation to mass and dimension limits, they need to physically check the mass, and obviously dimensions of their load prior to departure and ensure that they are complying with the company systems. They need to report any load issues or ongoing load issues, and in relation to documentation, they need to make sure that they’ve got all the appropriate documentation. As we talked about previously in relation to load safety, they’re going to need to make sure they comply with all the systems that the company has got into place to ensure that the load is restrained, safely. And in relation to fatigue and speeding. Nice and simple. I need to make sure that they meet their regulated driving hours requirements do not exceed regulated rest times or rest requirements, of course they’re going to need to report any fatigue and ensure that they don’t speed excessively. And I think it’s really important here that drivers do report any times when they feel that there is that need to speed to get the job done.
So, there we go guys that’s a nice quick summary of some of the responsibilities for drivers and operators, under the chain of responsibility. As we move through our series we’re going to be starting to look at a lot more detail about how this might be met, different systems that can use that sort of thing. But for now, thanks for listening and have a great day.