Australian Trucking Association applauds new braking tech requirements

Australian Trucking Association applauds new braking tech requirements

The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) recently came out in support of the Australian Government’s new mandate that certain new trucks and trailers must include stability control technologies. Geoff Crouch, chair of the ATA, says that this decision could prevent as many as 1,101 injuries and 126 deaths over the course of a few years.

New rules for heavy trucks

The mandate was part of the new Australian Design Rules (ADRs) and states that new heavy trucks in certain categories will need stability control starting in November 2020 and that all new trucks will require the technology starting in November 2022. The same mandate will apply to heavy trailers in July and November 2019. Road train converter dolly’s and non-standard low loaders are exempt from the mandate.

“Stability control is a vehicle safety system that monitors the stability and sideways acceleration of a heavy vehicle and kicks in to brake the vehicle if it detects a rollover starting,” says Crouch. “The ATA lobbied hard to extend the original proposal that the Infrastructure Department released for consultation. As a result of lobbying from the ATA and other stakeholders, the final design rules extend the mandate to include short wheelbase rigid trucks weighing more than 12 tonnes. This decision is projected to save another two lives over the years and prevent an extra 17 serious injuries compared to the original proposal.”

More work to do

Although the ATA and Crouch are happy with this new mandate, they also point out that other technologies deserve the same treatment, including autonomous emergency braking (AEB). “Autonomous emergency braking applies a truck’s brakes in emergency situations,” Crouch says. “Monash University research shows that rolling it out across the truck fleet would reduce fatal crashes by up to 25 percent and serious injury crashes by up to 17 percent.”