DoT plans code of conduct to control heavy vehicles

Anna Cox THE PROMOTION of regulation and self-regulation in the road freight industry through the development of an operator code of conduct and fleet management system is one of the short-term projects which is to be introduced by the Department of Transport. Announcing this at the launch of the Road to Safety Strategy, a five-year plan by the Department of Transport, minister Dullah Omar said there would also be an "attack" on inefficiency, fraud and corruption in the driver licensing, and vehicle registration and testing systems. "The problems are well known - unlicensed and inadequately trained drivers and medically-unfit long distance drivers, poor and unfit vehicles and the systematic overloading of both the road freight and public passenger sectors," he said. Decisive action The department has been involved, over the last year, in informal consultation with operator associations, unions and commuter organisations and identified a need for formal negotiations that should lead to decisive action in the following areas: l Together with employers drawing up a compulsory, but preferably self-regulatory code of practice for fleet and employee safety management. This will include the regulation of permissible hours of uninterrupted driving and the minimum rest time between turnarounds. It will also institute a compliance review system to govern safety in fleet operation that will set minimum standards in such areas as financial responsibility, vehicle inspection and maintenance programmes, the company records in terms of crashes and dangerous goods spillage incidents, drivers" records in terms of crashes and traffic violations and finally cargo and passenger overloading. Unannounced inspections l Under this system, companies would be subjected to unannounced, on-site inspections by the industry regulatory authority and/or government inspectors and would be awarded a rating - satisfactory, conditional or unsatisfactory. If awarded a "conditional" rating, the company will be given a specific period of time - probably about 45 days from the date of rating - to take the required corrective action or be served with an "unsatisfactory" rating which would trigger a suspension of all operations. The company would then still have the opportunity to make changes and reapply for a rating to get back into the system. An "unsatisfactory" rating more than twice would result in its operator card being permanently withdrawn.