A disgruntled South Australian operator has shared the story of a recent police intercept that led to a staff driver leaving the industry.
The South Australian Road Transport Association (SARTA) member, who preferred to remain anonymous, was speaking out in response to a bulletin from SARTA executive officer Steve Shearer about the “outdated punishment mentality” of too many police.
The operator said the former staff truckie was travelling through NSW in a B-double when she was pulled over by NSW Police.
“They made her pull back the curtains on both trailers, which seemed more a case of I can make you do that than anything else because they didn’t look at anything. Perhaps it was for restraints. Anyway, everything was in order. She is a very well-spoken and polite individual,” the operator wrote.
“They then took her logbook with three months of pages and sat in their police vehicle for 30 minutes examining each page. They found no breaches, except a minor admin issue that was utterly absurd.”
The operator said the truckie in question always put the registration number in the correct box on each page.
She also always, as a matter of habit, put the registration number on the comments section immediately after any rest break.
“The registration number therefore appears several times on each page, so there can be no mistake what vehicle she uses.”
On one page, almost two months before the interception date, police allegedly found that she forgot to place the registration number in the box at the top of the page.
“This page had the registration number after each rest break as she always does, so it appeared several times on that page just like every other page including the previous page which was a continuation of a trip. By the way she used the same truck for each journey so the registration number actually never changed in that book.
“She was pinched for not having the registration number in the box provided. No opportunity was given for her to add it (because it was painfully obvious what truck she had been using), just a fine.
“This is the most pedantic thing I have ever come across in any existence with various authorities, and I have seen many. I made an application to review it on the basis it was trifling, she had complied with the spirit of the law, it was a once off administrative error, not wilful disobedience and there was no safety risk whatsoever.
“That was rejected and the matter was to proceed.
“She became despondent after that encounter and eventually left trucking citing police and NHVR behaviour towards truck drivers as a catalyst.
“She was a very good and very compliant driver worth her weight.”
Shearer said this story is a classic example of the “police mindset of find a breach, no matter how technical, no matter how absurd”; no matter what other information is available that actually meets the intent of the requirement of the law.
“Only the most moronic or desperate stats-driven officer would have issued that infringement, when blind Freddie could ascertain the required information, the rego number, from the multiple entries on that page,” Shearer said.
“Yet they gleefully waste limited tax-payers money and limited police resources to trawl for the most insignificant technical breach they can find whilst displaying zero grasp of the intent of the law.
“Perhaps they did make a difference but not a positive one; they turned a skilled, compliant and safe HV driver into a despondent one who then no longer saw any future in our industry.”
Shearer said this is far from an isolated case and the scenario is so common that it’s damaging the industry and its workforce.
“It’s driving safe, compliant drivers, who as normal humans will make an occasional minor error that is really of no consequence, out of the industry.
“Shame on police forces and officers that refuse to leave the dark ages and drop the cops-and-robbers mentality. They should instead adopt pragmatic approaches to working with the industry with the joint collaborative aim of improving safety and facilitating the safe and efficient HV road freight industry that our economy needs.
“Senior police officers are every bit as much to blame because they continue to impose stats targets on their officers. They can deny that as much as they want but we know its true, both from the hard evidence and from more than enough discrete comments to us by disgruntled officers.
“Police should get with the program or get out of enforcing the HVNL.”
NSW Police were approached for comment.