Burdensome regulations telling you when to drive and when to stop.
Few places to park so you can obey those regulations.
A federal government that says one thing, but does another.
No, we’re not carping about the U.S. in 2018.
Drivers in Australia — “truckies” down there — are chaffing over rules that require them to take breaks, but the government is not meeting its requirements to provide rest areas every 80 kilometers (about 50 miles) so they can. Sound like a parking situation you’ve heard of in this country?
Needless to say drivers are unhappy, as reported in this Australian Broadcasting Corp. Rural news report. Just as U.S. truckers are suggesting it may take a major accident to prompt regulatory change, so are their Australian counterparts.
ABC Rural quotes Steve Schearer of the South Australian Road Transport Association:
“No government of any persuasion has ever spent enough money on rest areas for the trucking industry.”
“At the current spend rate, it is somewhere between 30 years and 50 years before we will get there.
“That’s outrageous. If you said to the community that we will build you a new hospital but we are going to take 40 or 50 years to do it, that government would get kicked out at the next election.
“That is not enough [funding], and we think it is time that government at all levels take fatigue management in the trucking industry seriously.”
Sound familiar?
