Traditionally, drivers and operators have been the focus of infringements against the transport legislation. Focus with recent legislative changes, however, have put a clear responsibility to ensure road safety and legislation requirements are not compromised on ALL PARTIES in the transport chain. This is what defines the chain of responsibility.

 

Chain of Responsibilities’ concept is that all those with responsibility for activities that affect compliance with regards to the road transport laws be held accountable legally for their breaches.

 

With this in mind, we would like all our valued customers to understand their roles in the chain of responsibility. We have supplied the expectations of numerous roles under the supply chain that we feel could be of use to our customers. Please see www.nhvr.gov.au for more information.

 

The law requires you to take all reasonable steps to prevent your actions or conduct from causing or contributing to a breach. In addition, the law also prohibits you from:

• Making demands that you know or ought to know would cause a breach 

• Coercing, inducing or encouraging breaches 

• Passing on false or misleading information that could cause a breach.

 You should ensure that you can demonstrate you did not know and could not have been reasonably expected to know that a breach in the road law occurred and that either:

• You had taken all reasonable steps to prevent the breach 

• There was nothing you could reasonably have done to prevent the breach.

There are no limits to the ways in which you can do this. What constitutes reasonable steps will vary according to everyone’s circumstances. You may need to change the way you do business. Taking reasonable steps could include:

• Reviewing your business practices 

• Developing an industry code of practice 

• Adopting a risk management approach 

• Using accreditation schemes 

• Changing your commercial arrangements

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Blacks Transport (Qld) Pty Ltd would like to take this opportunity to thank all our clients and business partners in advance for their cooperation in helping us all achieve our Chain of Responsibility targets.