transport – Page 42 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Level crossings and safety management

Regular readers will know that SafetyAWorkBlog believes that there is little justification for road/rail crossings, particularly in metropolitan areas, and that grade separation should be the aim of any crossing upgrades. Too often governments dismiss grade separation without serious consideration because it is usually the most expensive control option. Regardless of expense, elimination of hazards must be considered in public safety policy and OHS. It is only after the elimination of a hazard is seriously considered that lower order control measures are seen to be valid.

At the moment in Victoria, there is community outrage because the truck driver involved in the deaths of 11 train passengers at a level crossing at Kerang has been cleared of any legal responsibility for the deaths. Several relatives of victims are pursuing civil action against the driver, Mr Christiaan Scholl.

The wisdom of civil action against the driver is debatable as any potential financial “win” will come from the insurance pockets of the Transport Accident Commission and not Mr Scholl. Compensation may be gained but any hope that the action could be seen as a “penalty” is false.

The Kerang rail crossing illustrates some basic OHS issues:

Worker responsibility

The Kerang level crossing had design deficiencies that had repeatedly identified by a number of government authorities, local companies and the public. The court case heard that the crossing was known to be dangerous.

In OHS, known hazards are controlled in a number of ways. Clearly the rail and road traffic was not separated and engineering controls were not introduced at the time of the incident. The owners of the crossing (and this is debated also) determined that signage was appropriate (or even perhaps “as far as is reasonably practicable”?).

Clearly signage was not adequate but there is also the issue of driver (worker) responsibility. It was mentioned in court and repeatedly in the media that the level crossing was known to be dangerous. Why then, would drivers continue to treat the crossing as if it was not? The legal speed limits remained at 100kph, at the time of the incident. The road laws clearly state that road traffic must give way to rail traffic and yet drivers have admitted to complacency.

This is perhaps the source of a lot of the community outrage in relation to the Kerang incident. The findings in favour of the driver place all the responsibility for the incident on the inadequate design of the crossing.

Working environment

As employers have responsibility to ensure a safe and health work environment, so government has a social and legal obligation to make public areas safe. Victorian governments for decades have neglected the hazards presented by inadequately designed or controlled level crossings. Governments must take responsibility for inaction just as much as taking credit for action and infrastructure improvements.

Infrastructure spending had started to increase prior to the incident but the need was sharply illustrated through the unnecessary deaths of 11 rail passengers. Many Australian governments are spending millions of dollars on rail/road crossing upgrades as a result of the Kerang incident.

Road Safety and OHS

Many OHS professionals illustrate OHS by drawing on road safety. The correlation is very poor but the attempt is understandable – most people drive, they drive within strict laws that were learnt in training (induction), and the road laws are enforced by an external body (police = WorkSafe. However, this relationship has no corresponding role for employers, who have a workplace responsibility. The road user has a direct relationship with the regulator. In OHS the role of the employer is crucial.

Perhaps the Kerang incident and other level crossing incidents could be used in brainstorming to illustrate personal accountability, employer accountability and government responsibility. It would be a worthwhile exercise to discuss whether road safety and workplace safety could share as many educative elements as some of the advocates suggest.

As with most posts on SafetyAtWorkBlog, these thoughts are a work-in-progress and debate and commentary are welcome.

Kevin Jones

Note: SafetyAtWorkBlog is not privy to any of the court evidence and must rely on media reports. More information will be presented when available.

New transport fatigue commitments

Also at the ACTU Congress in early June 2009, the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, also made commitments to improves the health and safety of transport workers. In her speech, Gillard said

And through tripartite engagement we will be reforming independent contracting and the transport industry.

Australia’s truck drivers work hard to make a living. But they shouldn’t have to die to make a living. And we will be working on safe rates to prevent them from having to take that risk.

We will work with the Transport Workers Union and responsible employers to make sure that drivers are paid for all the work they do.

We will make sure that payment methods and rates do not require drivers to speed or work excessive hours just to make ends meet.

And through tripartite engagement we will be reforming independent contracting and the transport industry.

Australia’s truck drivers work hard to make a living. But they shouldn’t have to die to make a living. And we will be working on safe rates to prevent them from having to take that risk.

We will work with the Transport Workers Union and responsible employers to make sure that drivers are paid for all the work they do.

We will make sure that payment methods and rates do not require drivers to speed or work excessive hours just to make ends meet.

Tony Sheldon of the Transport Workers Union conducted a press conference shortly afterwards and the press release said:

Transport Workers Union Federal Secretary, Tony Sheldon, said it was time to put an end to the carnage on Australia’s roads where 280 people die each year from heavy-vehicle-related incidents.

“Trucks make up 2 per cent of registered vehicles on our roads but are involved in 22 per cent of fatalities,” Mr Sheldon said.

“We need to make sure owner-drivers and employees are paid for their waiting time, for increases in fuel prices and for proper maintenance on their vehicles so they are not forced to do ‘one more load’ and push the boundaries to make ends meet.”

Australia’s transport industry have been the leaders in getting fatigue on the OHS and industrial relations agenda over the last five years.

The implication in Sheldon’s words above is that fatigue and delivery/schedule pressures are generating road fatalities of drivers and other road users. The Deputy PM made the same link between remuneration and safety. (If any readers can point towards the evidence behind the rhetoric, it would be appreciated).

The challenge for the TWU and, to a lesser extent, the governemtn is that unions represent a minority of transport drivers and so the coverage of union rules and codes of conduct have limited effect. That is not to say that the limited effect is not important but the Deputy PM told the ACTU Congress what it needs to do to make these OHS and IR changes a reality.

Gillard told the congress delegates that they needed to get out into the community and start building membership, as membership is strength. This is particularly important on those policies and initiatives such as OHS and transport safety, where there is broad community impact.

Some of the proudest achievements in the Australian trade union movement have come from those social contracts that have improved living conditions and health, not only just salary levels, to those workers in Australia who struggle to stay financially viable. The union movement needs to reinvigorate its members and itself to improve the quality of life for all and not just the pay packets for some.

Kevin Jones

Lack of restraint – Australian approach, Singapore deaths

sa0200906[1]_Page_1 The Northern Territory OHS authority issued a guidance this week about unrestrained travel in work vehicles, a practice many of us stopped some time ago. Obviously not everyone has.

The NT guidance is a curious document as it strongly advocates that employers assess the hazards of unrestrained travel and decide the appropriate control measures. This advice is in line with legislative requirements and safety management protocols but clearly the authority has much clearer advice. The document is headed

“No seat – No belt – No ride”

The assessment has been done and the heading gives the best advice. In OHS profession speak – if there is no seat for a passenger and/or no seat belt then NT OHS says allowing someone to travel on or in the vehicle is not acceptable.

Australia can often be glib about workplace incidents as it always looks past its region for comparisons from the US or Europe rather than looking at its immediate neighbourhood.

Singapore’s Strait-Times reported in May 2009 about the real consequences of unrestrained travel after

“…three foreign workers sitting in the back of a lorry died after it crashed into the back of a trailer. A fourth man in the front seat also died.”

The article goes on to list the law changes that Singapore has introduced but, more interestingly, tells how much more complicated the issue is than in Australia due to the level of foreign labour.

Kevin Jones

Big fine for go-kart death

The AAP and others are reporting a big fine over the death of Lydia Carter whilst driving a go-kart at a work function held in Port Melbourne in 2006. The significance of the $A1.4 million fine is that the company, AAA Auscarts Imports Pty Ltd, is not a large or multinational corporation.

Ms Carter was wearing a seat belt that did not fit properly and safety barriers on the track had been incorrectly installed.

Judge Duncan Allen said

“There is no doubt in my mind that (Auscarts) not only was fully aware of the risk, but was fully aware of the ways to reduce them”

“The company showed a gross disregard concerning the safety of employees and the public.”

For OHS professionals this case, which ended today (12 May 2009) in the Victorian County Court, will generate a fair degree of attention because of the fine’s size. However, from the information currently available, the case seems one of the go-kart company having a work environment that was unsafe for customers, the company being aware of this and not doing enough to fix it.

SafetyAtWorkBlog is also looking into how Ms Carter’s death has changed her employer’s organisation, what effect it had on her colleagues, what policy changes have been made, amongst other matters.

The judgement will also be made available as soon as possible.

Kevin Jones

Fatigue is the biggest threat to a person’s safety

Not so long ago, it was considered a legitimate criticism to blame the individual for “doing the wrong thing” at work. Depending on the type of worksite, this was considered “human error” or “bloody stupid”.

Fatigue is an interesting illustration of how occupational health and safety must cope with new perspectives on established hazards. Australian OHS legislation operates on a responsibility to manage the systems of work in a workplace, of which only one element is the worker.

A good incident investigation goes beyond the incident to see what led up to a worker acting the way they did, the reasons behind the decision. Instead of “tell me about your childhood”, OHS practitioners can legitimately ask “tell me about your sleep patterns”, or “tell me about your second job”, or “tell me about your relationship with your partner”, as these can be contributory factors to the decision made on the day or the work environment at the time of the incident.

Some recent AAP articles provide interesting examples of the different contexts in which fatigue as a workplace issue can manifest:

“Ambulance Employees Australia (AEA) said weary paramedics had fallen asleep at the wheel and administered wrong drugs because they did not have enough time off between shifts.

They have called for a minimum 10-hour break between shifts, compared with eight hours under the current award.

But Ambulance Victoria has said the fatigue issue was one of 175 union claims, which it said sought $800 million from pay talks.”

“Investigators examining the near-catastrophe at Melbourne Airport last month are exploring whether fatigue was a factor after being told the pilot had barely slept the day before the flight.

Emirates pilots are permitted to fly a maximum of 100 hours each 28 days and the pilot was also almost at the legal threshold of the number of hours he was able to fly.

Emirates has issued a statement saying safety was a top priority for the airline.”

A higher priority than a good night’s sleep apparently! Clearly it is the spread of hours that is the issue not the total over a fixed period.

Both these examples relate to workers’ interactions with the public and reflect the complexity of OHS’s spread to public safety.

It seems that every investigation now automatically assesses the fatigue level, or impairment, of the participants in incidents in the same way mobile phone records are checked in car accidents and blood-alcohol levels or drug testing in some industrial events.

If your OHS professional does not consider psychosocial issues in developing safety management plans or incident investigation, seek a second opinion, or better yet, make sure the first opinion is comprehensive.

Kevin Jones

Farmers creating dis-harmony in OHS legislation

Australia is undergoing a process of national harmonisation on workplace safety legislation. The government has played down the chances of State jurisdictions creating exemptions to, or variations of, OHS law. The message was that we are all “singing from the same song sheet”.

Even before model OHS legislation has been approved, the New South Wales Farmer’s Federation has wangled an exemption from the driver fatigue legislation in that state.

According to the President of the NSW Farmer’s Federation, Jock Laurie, the fatigue law was not about reducing or removing fatigue from the transport industry, it was about

“bureaucrats finding other ways to make life difficult for people”.

He is willing to even go on the record with the statement – Jock Laurie

As farmer and outspoken conservative Senator Bill Heffernan, said in Parliament on 22 September 2008, the legislation

“is designed to make driving safer and the work conditions better for drivers in Australia, and to harmonise the laws across the states.”

Yet he goes on to support the call for an exemption which results in weakening the harmonisation process.

It seems that farmers who drive trucks long-distances over many hours, particularly during harvest-time, do not have any relationship to the transport industry. The situation will now be that a petrol tanker driver on a country highway can operate under one set of national OHS and transport rules and a farmer delivering grain to a port operates with an exemption – all because maintainign a log book is unnecessary red tape!

This threat to the harmonisation process should have been jumped on by the Federal government.

However, it has to be said, that inadequate transport infrastructure investment has lead to the closure of country rail lines and increased the need for farmers to transport produce by road, thereby increasing the road risk to rural communities. Perhaps the farmers’ lobby groups realise they can’t change the big picture so are aiming for little targets.

Kevin Jones

Roadwork zone speed limit enforcement

At the Safety In Action Conference recently, Geoff Knox, CEO of Downer EDI spoke about the need to respect speed limits on roadwork sites. He mentioned this because his company conducts a lot of this type of work, but anyone who has driven through such a zone at the reduced speed limit sees many cars and truck travelling much faster, and only metres away from workers.

Crikey.com included a rumour in its 9 April 2009 bulletin that says on a stretch of the Monash Freeway that is being widened, that

“..within the Vic State Government that there is a tacit understanding not to police this stretch of road outside of peak hours and that between 50% & 60% of drivers are speeding. “

There are many instances where “tacit understandings” evolve into, or are considered, corruption and it is very disappointing that speed cameras, or other speed enforcement tactics, are not being applied in a circumstance where the need has never been more obvious.

Police threatened a blitz on the Monash in November 2008 if speed was not reduced.

In typical Crikey styles, there is a suggestion that there is a political advantage in this for nearby shaky electorates but the rumourmonger’s final comment brought the rumour into our context.

“Vicroads are known to be particularly concerned about worker safety, particularly at night when work is being undertaken. There is a tragedy waiting to happen, and the finger pointing after the fact will be most interesting.”

Kevin Jones

Category: transport

Level crossings and safety management

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New transport fatigue commitments

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Lack of restraint – Australian approach, Singapore deaths

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Big fine for go-kart death

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Fatigue is the biggest threat to a person’s safety

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Farmers creating dis-harmony in OHS legislation

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Roadwork zone speed limit enforcement

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