The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) has recently released a draft code of practice, focusing on safety for the Waste and Recycling Industry. The code is concerned with load management, highlighting hazards, their associated risk and engineering controls that can be implemented to improve safety.
NHVR advised the code is not just for waste transporters. Any party that is involved in the supply chain – from business and local governments, to landfill or any sites that collect and process waste & recycling. The implementation of the recommendations are not mandatory. However, in legal proceedings courts can refer Chain of Responsibility (CoR) parties to the registered code as evidence of risks and controls they should know.
Some of the key risk and controls measures outlined in the draft code include:
Blind Spot Safety:
Lifting equipment can obscure the driver’s vision and create additional blind spots around heavy vehicles. For front lift vehicles, ensuring the lifting equipment can be moved out of a driver’s line of sight can help reduce this hazard. Another effective safety control is deploying a blind spot monitoring device. This technology typically utilises radar waves to detect objects. Waste disposal and recycling vehicles are regularly on the move, operating nearby other vehicles and vulnerable road users like cyclists and pedestrians. Alerting drivers when pedestrians or objects enter larger blind spots can help reduce collisions.
Exclusion Zone Breaches:
Pedestrians will often walk by a waste disposal vehicle which heightens the risk of a collision with a load or part of the vehicle itself. Rigorous training programs as part of a safety management system (SMS) can instruct drivers to complete a site safety inspection for known high traffic areas. This may not be practical for all uses such as busy city lane kerbside collections. Using a pedestrian detection system can ensure safe separation between these vehicles and the public. A PDS that utilises AI object recognition can reduce human error and immediately alert drivers that a pedestrian has entered a pre-set exclusion zone around the vehicle.
The draft code is currently awaiting feedback from relevant stakeholders within the industry to ensure the recommendations are relevant.