NatRoad calls for mandatory construction of rest stops under national fund

The National Road Transport Association (NatRoad) is calling on the Federal Government to create a national truck rest stop fund, with CEO Warren Clark saying border delays had caused increased fatigue for heavy vehicle operators during the pandemic.

Speaking following lodgement of a submission to the Federal Joint Select Committee on Road Safety, Mr Clark said the current approach to funding and building rest areas was fragmented and inconsistent.

“Western Australia and Queensland are pressing on with building jointly-funded rest areas while New South Wales is still conducting a study,” Mr Clark said.

“We’re not talking about building bridges – rest areas are infrastructure projects that can be stood up in a relatively short time and can provide local jobs and proven safety outcomes.

With a membership representing more than 45,000 trucking companies with more than 140,000 people across the country, the not-for-profit association advocates for the road freight industry.

In 2018, the trucking industry responded to an Austroads research report seeking comment on guidelines for truck rest areas with a series of recommendations.

NatRoad’s recommendations, Mr Clark said, ranged from provision of truck rest areas every 32 kilometres and a ban on general and caravan parking in the truck section of any rest area, to providing more toilets and barring road agencies from using rest areas to store roadwork materials.

“Few, if any, of those have been adopted by any State or Territory government,” he said.

The Austroads issued in January 2019 truck rest area guidelines called for detailed heavy vehicle rest areas strategies for major highways and significant freight routes.

“There were also guidelines for distances between rest areas depending on the class of vehicles – it’s time to mandate these in the same way that driver rest breaks are compulsory,” Mr Clark said.

“Let’s share the construction cost via a national fund that puts the onus on the States and Territories to match and spend funding in a finite time or lose it.”

Mr Clark said a seminal US study showed that more frequently placement of rest areas had a major, positive impact on fatigue-related accidents.

That study found that commercial vehicle driver at-fault crashes involving sleepiness or fatigue were more likely to occur on roadways where the nearest rest areas/truck stops were 30 kilometres a commercial vehicle crash site.

The incidence of crashes rose once the distance exceeded 32 kilometres, highlighting this distance as a hard upper limit for mapping rest locations.

In recent weeks, there have been reports of border bottlenecks as truck drivers travelling from New South Wales hotspots to Queensland are required to present either having received the first doze of vaccine or evidence of a negative COVID test result within seven days and, in some cases, proof of a test within 72 hours of a border crossing under the “F Pass” Queensland border declaration.

According to NHVR, freight drivers entering Victoria, other than from a green zone, must undertake a COVID-19 test every three days if they have been to an extreme risk/red zone or within 72 hours if they have been in an orange zone.

The requirement has resulted in some drivers getting stuck at the border for days awaiting test results.