Why you should care about the big safety problems with our heavy vehicles

This week in a series of focused feature articles, this masthead will examine the many issues confronting Australia's heavy vehicle safety, and how and why it affects every one of us, from vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists, to car drivers, consumers and industry generally.

Heavy vehicles are a vital and ubiquitous feature on our roads.

However, their presence - specifically among the thousands of older trucks still performing dutiful service - also carries the price of compromised safety for all road users.

That safety compromise, together with the court-proven culpability on the part of the truck driver involved, cost a vibrant, happy four-year-old boy, Blake Corney, his life in a major rear-end collision on the Monaro Highway south of Canberra in July, 2018.

It was an impact - an avoidable one, should the correct safeguards have been set in place and the driver fully attentive - which has left a small Canberra family shattered and inconsolable, their lives wrecked.

Such was graphic and stomach-churning nature of that terrible crash, in which a landscaping supplies truck ploughed into the back of the stationary family SUV and killed Blake sitting in his car seat, all photographic records of the scene have been sealed.

Even the police collision specialists called to attend that crash on that awful day in 2018 were deeply affected and have been quietly moved on to other roles.

As Blake's legacy, Australia has to do far better on heavy vehicle safety.

That's why action is needed now.

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In tackling the issue of heavy vehicle safety on Australia's roads, a circuit breaker is desperately needed, as is a fresh approach which delivers better outcomes for the industry, and improved safety for drivers and the general public which share the road.

The critical truth for all heavy vehicles using our roads is that the physics of mass and velocity are inescapable. The heavier the vehicle and the greater its speed, the far greater the kinetic energy that large mass transmits to other objects it might hit.

There is ample proof that the best heavy vehicle technology can ameliorate outcomes by alerting and assisting drivers to avoid crashes.

However, as ACT Chief Coroner Lorraine Walker pointed out in her inquiry last year into Blake's death, a significant onus of responsibility for safety must also fall on the heavy vehicle driver.

The driver involved in this incident, who is serving a jail term for his clear culpability, clearly was unfit to drive. His doctor knew the man was unfit to drive but there is no legislated mandatory reporting of that lack of fitness to drive, nor of the conditions by which that driver can be instructed that he not operate a heavy vehicle.

So there are many important links to this heavy vehicle safety chain which require much closer scrutiny, as this series of special features - known simply as Blake's Legacy - will endeavour to provide.

Finally, as people in rural and regional areas served by ACM titles know all too well when the pandemic-blighted January supply chains crumbled and supermarket shelves were stripped of groceries and other consumables, our national supply chain is an all-too-fragile one.

When people working at those loading bays, at those ports, in those distribution centres and driving the trucks can no longer perform those roles - through testing positive to COVID, falling ill, or being forced to self-isolate - then the supply chain system breaks down very quickly.

Therefore the integrity of the road haulage system which provides such an an essential service has to be protected.

But not at any cost.

Not at the cost of compromised safety, and not at the cost of a young, innocent life and the lives of many other people on our roads.

Solutions are needed - and soon.

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