The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) has released its latest ‘Removing Roadblocks to Reform’ paper and called for swift reform of Australia’s Performance Based Standards (PBS) scheme.
NHVR chief safety and productivity officer David Hourigan says the paper calls on the Australian transport industry and governments involved to work alongside the regulator to create positive change for the road transport sector.
Hourigan says that while the PBS scheme has proven to be popular, it was initially designed to act as a pathway for innovative designs and technologies to be safely developed and deployed. Now, he says it’s failing to operate as originally intended.
“Rather than allowing for new truck designs, it is dominated by more or less of the same vehicles,” Hourigan says.
“Of more than 20,000 PBS combinations on Australia’s roads, almost half consist of one vehicle type – the truck and dog combination.
“The ‘Removing Roadblocks to Reform’ paper outlines how we can work hand-in-hand with our partners to remove barriers to the productivity potential of the heavy vehicle industry. This will help us accelerate the transition to a younger and less polluting heavy vehicle fleet, and most importantly, save lives.”
Hourigan says the safest and most productive lower emissions heavy vehicles in Australia face more barriers to get on the road than a standard ‘prescriptive’ heavy vehicle, meaning the industry is seeing higher emissions, a loss of productivity benefits and more fatalities.
“We need to modernise the PBS scheme, and to do this we must change the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL),” Hourigan says.
“We seek to work with government and industry to reset the PBS scheme’s policy settings and update the PBS standards.”
Through the NHVR’s paper, it’s calling for HVNL amendments to allow for mature and proven PBS vehicles to transition to the prescriptive vehicle fleet.