The NHVR has released a case learnings document on offenses under the Heavy Vehicle National Law. This comes after a Supreme court decision this month involving an owner operator of a towing company.  The NHVR lodged an appeal against a Magistrates decision on the legal meaning of the term ‘reckless’.

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The case learnings document includes guidance for industry on how to meet your primary duty obligations under the Heavy Vehicle National Law (link to learnings).

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Key message

Considering the potentially significant consequences for non-compliance with your primary duty, it is important that you review your safety systems and ensure you are doing everything reasonably practicable to eliminate or minimise the risks in your transport activities.

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Some takeaways from the case:

• Under the Heavy Vehicle National Law, a person is reckless as to the risk if they are aware of the possibility of death, serious injury or illness as a result of their conduct and still choose to engage in that conduct
• It doesn’t matter if there is less than a 50% chance of the risk occurring – if death, serious injury or illness is a possibility, it’s a real risk for you.
• If you ignore a risk that is known to you, you may be found to be reckless.

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Regulatory Advice

When you read this case learning takeaways together with the Regulatory Advice regarding heavy vehicle safety technology and telematics you can see that automating your telematics compliance management systems and simplifying heavy vehicle safety and compliance administration makes so much sense.(Link to Regulatory Advice)

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CoR parties and their executives may be failing to meet their primary duty obligations if they are aware of, or ought to reasonably be aware of, a safety technology that is available and suitable to eliminate or mitigate a risk associated with their transport activities but fail to implement this measure. 

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If CoR parties install the safety technology but fail to use the telematics data appropriately, because they are unwilling to develop a system to process, monitor, and interpret the data, this is unlikely to meet the threshold of reasonably practicable.

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