Almost five percent of heavy vehicle drivers, intercepted during a two-week operation across Australia, breached fatigue-related regulations.
National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) Chief Operations Officer Paul Salvati said Operation Omega saw increased patrols during the Christmas holiday period at identified high crash risk areas and at times when the risk of fatigue is the highest.
Mr Salvati said NHVR on-road officers, working in partnership with police across Australia, identified almost 200 fatigue-related offences including 17 critical breaches.
He said over two weeks there were 4524 inspections across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, with the aim of keeping the roads safe during the busiest time of year.
“Of the total intercepts, 182 resulted in fatigue-related compliance action.
“97 offences were detected during these intercepts for drivers exceeding their allowable work hours, or not taking adequate periods of rest, some recording false or misleading work diary entries.
“17 of these offences were classified as critical fatigue breaches, the most severe fatigue-related violation, each presenting the highest risk of a driver causing a deadly crash, risking their life, or someone else’s.”
Mr Salvati said NHVR officers undertook their usual inform, educate and enforce approach to compliance, providing education to drivers in more than 1000 of the intercepts conducted.
“At the NHVR, we do not undertake ‘blitzes’, but rather focus our operations as an opportunity to inform and educate drivers ensuring they understand how to meet their safety obligations with enforcement only used as a secondary action where required.”
Mr Salvati said while the NHVR prioritised education, officers didn’t hesitate to enforce the Heavy Vehicle National Law for those intentionally doing the wrong thing.
“Unfortunately, we did detect 12 recidivist operators, with those companies receiving multiple fatigue-related offences during the two weeks.”
He said in addition to the fatigue-related compliance, there were 742 intercepts with one or more mechanical defects identified, with 1477 defect components across all states, 185 of them major.
