A guide to work health and safety in the road freight transport industry
A guide to work health and safety in the road freight transport industry
Download this guide as a PDF, 2749.87 KB.
Chapters
- Introduction
- Incident notification
- Embedding a health and safety landscape
- What a health and safety landscape should look like in the transport industry
- Consultation in the workplace
- Focus on key priority areas
- Hazard prevention
- Risk assessment
- Traffic management
- Loading/unloading procedures
- Immobilising heavy vehicles and trailers
- Securing loads
- Working at heights
- Ancillary (non-driving) tasks
- Musculoskeletal disorders
- Work-related psychological (mental) health
- Psychosocial hazards
- At-risk workers
- Fatigue
- Alcohol and other drugs
- Sedentary work
- Distracted driving
- Transporting hazardous chemicals
- Transporting explosives
- Road safety
- Improved recovery at work practices
1. Introduction
This guide provides work health and safety information for road freight transport operators and their supply chains. It provides guidance relevant to New South Wales work health and safety (WHS) laws and is a useful resource for operators, drivers and all involved in the road freight transport industry.
The transport industry is an essential service provider for all Australians, but unfortunately records a high rate of fatalities and serious injuries. Therefore, the industry is a focus area in the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012 -2022 and a priority industry in SafeWork NSW’s Work Health and Safety Roadmap for NSW 2022 (Roadmap).
Please note, the Roadmap has been replaced by the SafeWork NSW Regulatory Priorities.
While road accidents are top of mind causes of fatalities and serious injuries, there are several high-risk activities for workers and others when the vehicle stops that contribute to incident and claim rates.
In 2018, SafeWork NSW launched the Transport Work Health and Safety Sector Plan (Transport sector plan) following consultation with our industry stakeholders to address these issues. Key priority areas were identified as well as the work activities that cause serious injuries and fatalities in the transport industry. The key priority areas are:
- at-risk workers
- musculoskeletal injuries
- working at heights
- access to and from vehicles
- mental and physical health
- traffic management
- ancillary non-driving tasks.
The Transport sector plan is informed by other key Roadmap strategies including:
- At-Risk Workers’ Strategy 2018-22
- Mentally healthy workplaces strategy 2018-22
- Falls from heights: Data insights and action plan.
In February 2018, the NSW Government released the Road Safety Plan 2021. This was developed to set new road safety priorities and actions to help NSW work toward the State Priority target of a 30 per cent reduction in road fatalities by 2021 (compared to 2008–2010 levels).
In support of the Road Safety Plan 2021, a guide has been developed which provides workplaces with information about key road safety issues and risks, and ways to help you and your workers get around safely while using the road. It also supplies information to help you embed road safety within your workplace.
More information
- View the Road safety plan 2021
- Read the Road safety in your workplace – Employer toolkit