PAYMENT RATES * Australia - Test safe rates against other safety measures

Canberra,Australia -ATA Friday Fact -18 Feb 2011: -- The Australian Government should compare the safety benefits and costs of safe rates against other road safety measures before going ahead with the concept, ATA Chief Executive, Stuart St Clair, said today...  Stuart was releasing the ATA’s submission in response to the Government’s Safe Rates Directions Paper. The directions paper examines three models for regulating payment rates in the industry further, on the grounds that this would improve truck safety...  Stuart said the Government needed to prepare a thorough regulatory impact statement into safe rates, and evaluate its costs and safety benefits against allocating similar resources to other road safety measures...  Stuart said the Government also needed to ensure that the industry’s existing safety regulations are rigorously applied, with an emphasis on the chain of responsibility regulations. Under chain of responsibility, trucking companies and the industry’s customers can be held to account if their actions, inactions or demands lead to unsafe situations on the road...  Stuart called on the Government to provide trucking companies with regulatory incentives to join the ATA’s TruckSafe safety management program... (Photo from easytravelreport: Truck australia, a Volvo truck)