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| The term heavy vehicles is generally applied to the
trucks which transport goods all across Australia, but it also includes
buses, trams and long vehicles. While they are concentrated on the main
interstate routes, heavy vehicles such as livestock transporters, tankers,
grain and delivery trucks will also be found on side roads delivering
products that build our way of life.
Why do we need heavy vehicles?
Transport plays an essential role in supporting
the economy by enabling business to access raw materials, to move intermediate
products between factories, and to transport goods to shops and homes.
It expands the State’s economy by making it possible for South
Australian businesses to export goods interstate and overseas. While
big trucks might be a problem it does keep prices lower for all of us
and ultimately means fewer trucks are on the road.
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Heavy vehicles provide vital services and economic benefits to the community,
for example:
- The road freight industry employs around 5% of the workforce in Australia,
and contributes 5.6% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
- The bus and coach industry carries nearly 1 billion passengers each year
– that’s nearly 70% of all public transport trips in Australia
– and employees nearly 30, 000 people.
Heavy vehicles and crashes
Heavy Vehicles are involved in approximately 20% of vehicle crashes.
However a high proportion of these crashes are the fault of a light vehicle
driver rather than the driver of the heavy vehicle. On the other hand most
people killed in these crashes are not occupants of the heavy vehicle. It
is therefore in everyone’s interest to drive safely around heavy vehicles.
There are a number of specific driving rules and safety
tips that particularly apply to drivers sharing the roads with heavy or
long vehicles, which includes vehicles towing caravans and trailers. These
include:
- distance required to pass when vehicles are travelling at 100 or 110km/h
- longer braking distance required for heavy vehicles
- long vehicles needing 2 lanes to be able to turn.
Long vehicles
A long vehicle is 7.5m or longer, including any overhanging load. It
can be a car towing a caravan or trailer as well as most trucks.
To make overtaking safer where the road has only one lane each way, the law
states that long vehicles must keep at least 60m apart, except when overtaking.
On a road-train route the minimum distance is 200m.
Drivers on country roads need to take extra care when overtaking long vehicles.
A driver of a car travelling at 110 km/h on a two-way road will need about
two kilometres of clear road ahead to safely overtake a 23
metre B-double vehicle that is travelling at 100 km/h. And any on-coming vehicle
could also be travelling towards you at 110 km/h.
Allow yourself plenty of time to overtake long vehicles, especially in wet
weather, and remember that trailers or caravans may sway from side to side.
Never overtake a long vehicle that is approaching a crossroad. It may be
hiding another vehicle, which could be turning onto your road in front of
it and you could find yourself in a high-speed head-on collision.
Remember that heavy vehicles need a lot more distance to stop than other
vehicles, due to their extra weight. Keeping clear of heavy vehicles that
are stopping will help prevent accidents.
For more information about sharing the road safely with heavy vehicles, refer
to Heavy Vehicles – Safety
Tips.
Other Important Information
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Heavy
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