ROAD SAFETY
have some measure of barrier to entry, as the
standard had been raised, but needed to now be
consistently applied across the country.
O’Dwyer noted Austroads had formally embarked
on a committee review of the training and licensing
standards for the Traffic Control industry, which,
over time would alleviate some of the issues. He
said, however, the changeover to provide a one
stop training and licensing approach across the
country would not be introduced in the short term.
From left: Treasurer Andrew White, Secretary Brendan
Woods, Board Member Stephen Hynes, President
Stephen O’Dwyer, Vice President Cam Scott.
be done to control training standards, Personal
Protective Equipment (PPE) visibility, signage
consistency and work across borders. At this
stage Traffic Controllers, and indeed sometimes,
companies, cannot work across borders without
the right collection of licenses and additional
costs to abide by the PPE, signage, and training
requirements,” he said.
“Traffic Controllers need to apply for five different
licenses (and in some cases repeat training) to work
in Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland,
New South Wales and Victoria.” He noted that the
Northern Territory and Tasmania also had their own
licensing and training structures.
“If we think there are delays now, this inconsistency
will cause further future delays as Traffic Controllers
leave the industry due to high costs of licensing
and retraining in each state,” he said.
O’Dwyer said the current recruitment requirements
across states already prohibited a wide proportion
of the community from applying, and that the
stakes were high to become a Traffic Controller, in
particular in the cost of training pre-employment.
He noted however, that it was important to
“The whole national process for harmonisation
of safety and training in the industry needs to
be undertaken with a unified approach to ensure
consistency and awareness of safety on roadwork
and construction sites,” he said, adding that the
Traffic Management Industry has grown quickly
and initially without regulation, and that this was
an inherent essential to keep our employees
from harm, raise the standards and benchmark
the industry.
O’Dwyer said the fatality toll in Queensland,
Victoria and the injury count played heed to
governments t o provide control for Traffic Control
companies and their compliance programs, but
screamed the need for more public awareness
campaigns to slow motorists down.
“Traffic Controllers are viewed as interrupting
the journey to work or on holiday etc. not as
performing a task to protect both the travelling
public and the road and construction workers
tasked with building the superhighways and
structures that in the long term, will make the
journey easier,” he said.
O’Dwyer added that Traffic Controllers often are
verbally abused, driven at, have items thrown at
them and/or are assaulted. He noted that this was
as an aside to the injuries and near misses suffered
on a daily basis on sites all over the country.
“I am constantly astounded by the lack of respect
from one human being to another in this industry.
Govlink Issue 2 2013
Traffic Controllers are not
robots. Interestingly, trials
with robots have proven to
have the robots treated in the
same manner over time as
suffered by the human Traffic
Controllers,” he said.
“In our rush to get from A to
B, we have taken safety off
the table.”
O’Dwyer noted that across the
country supplier companies
working to produce vehicles,
signage and PPE for the
industry were scrambling
to work with the Traffic
Management state and
national associations to bring
a compliant, consistent safe
set of products to the market.
“The goal is to eventually
have a Traffic Controller
stand out from the crowd and
be recognised as a safety
implementation to be taken
seriously,” he said.
“Federal, state and local
governments need to ensure
a uniformed regulatory
system to keep Traffic Control
companies, contractors, and
the public endorsing and
practising safety behaviour.”
TMAA can be contacted on
1300 798 772 or at tmaa@
tmaa.asn.au.
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