New report on work health and safety in the road freight transport industry

Safe Work Australia has released a new report on work health and safety in the road freight transport industry.

The report was released in response to the identification of the road transport industry subsector as a priority in the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012-2022 (the Australian Strategy). The road transport industry together with the agriculture industry was identified as the focus of efforts in all jurisdictions during the first five years of the Australian Strategy due to the high numbers of fatalities in these industries.

The report provides an overview of the work health and safety status within the road freight transport industry, an industry primarily engaged in transporting freight using trucks on public roads. Road freight transport is a subsector of the road transport industry.

The main findings of the report were as follows:

• There was a 48% decrease in the annual number of work-related injury fatalities in the industry over the last four years. Despite this, fatality rates in the road freight transport industry were roughly 10 times higher than those for all industries across the eight years up to 2011.
• 78% of the work-related injury fatalities were the result of single-vehicle incidents on public roads.
• There were around 4000 non-fatal serious workers compensation claims requiring a week or more away from work each year between 2002 and 2011.
• The majority of serious workers compensation claims were caused by manual handling or falls rather than vehicle incidents.

Jurisdictional activities include a campaign in Queensland to improve the management of the risk of falls when working on and around heavy vehicles.

For the full report and more information about work health and safety in the road industry, visit the Safe Work Australia website.