Every time we get behind the wheel, we hope to come home to our loved ones, safe and well.
So, when a spate of heavy vehicle rollovers occurred a few years ago, it triggered concern — not only for the truck drivers, but for other road users as well.
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COO of the Livestock, Bulk and Rural Carriers Association (LBRCA) Bec Coleman, along with Alan Pincott from Australian Transport Safety Solutions and Systems, have together developed the Heavy Vehicle Rollover Awareness Program (HRVAP).
The program is aimed at reducing heavy vehicle rollovers and crashes, preventing the loss of life or serious injury in the Australian road freight industry.
HVRAP is your one-stop-heavy-vehicle-rollover shop, that gives you access to resources and tools, so you can learn from the real-life experiences of professional drivers, all in your own time.
“We developed this program because during Covid, we wanted to reduce face-to-face training,” Coleman says.
“It had become a huge barrier to train across the industry, as no-one could get face-to-face training for those two years.
“This was a way of moving toward the future and providing that same training, but in an online environment.
“It was also a means of providing free learning to industry. You shouldn’t have to continue paying for learning, that should
be free.”
Within the program there are 12 modules, discussing all things vehicles, systems, people, roads, how to tackle this issue as an industry and what causes a rollover.
Coleman says the general program teaches the basics that apply to heavy vehicles, but there are additional modules for specific sectors, such as timber, grain and cotton.
“There’s a specific rollover awareness tool to complement HVRAP for every commodity that we cart in a heavy vehicle,” she explains.
The program went through two years of development, launching in August this year.
“We’ve tried to engage as many industry people as possible — people that have been living and breathing their heavy vehicle operation for decades.”
Funded through the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator’s (NHVR) Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative (HVSI), they’re also about to launch phase two of the HRVAP, which includes a rollover crash investigation tool to identify trends in the industry and discover why and where things occur.
“We don’t have sufficient data to be able to analyse that right now, so the purpose of the asset tool is to do exactly that, to encourage industry to report data, to provide this information, so we can identify trends and prevent problems.”
HRVAP is designed for all supply chain parties including drivers, loaders, schedulers or even farmers.
“Farmers are often consigning goods onto these vehicles, so they should be aware of what problems may arise by overloading or trying to fit too much product on the vehicle,” Coleman says.
When Deals on Wheels asked how important it was for truckies to participate in the program, Coleman emphasised that everyone should be participating.
The free program has a login, so users can stop and start, and it will take off from where they last finished a module.
“It’s in your own time, at your own pace and so simple to use,” she says.
“We’ve used a lot of video and real content from the industry so users can relate to it, which may encourage them to keep coming back and continuing to learn.”
Five years from now, Coleman hopes the program will result in a major reduction in heavy vehicle rollovers, saving lives
every day.
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