19 March, 2012 9:07AM AEDT

Transport company debuts a voluntary 90km/h speed limit for its trucks

What gave this Warrnambool-based transport company the idea that it should limit the speed of its fleet to 90km/h? Ryan's Transport managing director Graham Ryan details why his company is choosing to lead the industry in adopting this measure, while the RACV's chief policy director Brian Negus and a truckie called Shane give their analysis of how this might affect the state's transport industry.

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In an environment of ongoing tensions between car and truck drivers, the managing director of Ryans Transport, servicing routes from South Australia across Western and South West Victoria, declares there are three reasons why the 12 new trucks his company has purchased will be speed-limited to 90 kilometres per hour.

"Safety, environment and economics," says Graham Ryan.

"If you look at trucks, for years and years and years [when a] truck is involved in an accident, it's not car caused, it's trucks, and in recent times what you see on the news - horrific accidents with trucks, trains, buses, things like that - the media view of transport is the trucks are too close behind cars, trucks are passing in the wrong places; there's a hell of a lot of pressure on the drivers in the transport industry as such."

Geoff Ryan says the level of safety generated by restricting semi-trailer trucks to 90km/h increases generously, and allows for greater room for both the truck driver to manage problems a well as offering car drivers a much easier target to reach in order to overtake trucks on the open road.

"At 100 kilometres [100km/h] the lacker band's stretched as tight as it can and if something goes wrong, it's a disaster. We looked at 95 kilometres [95km/h] - at 95 kilometres a car still has to reach 110-115 to pass a heavy vehicle. With some of the trials we've done the decision was made to bring it back to 90 kilometres [90km/h] and other vehicles, other road users can pass us at a reasonable speed," he says.

Is the safety tradeoff therefore the problem of trucks unable to keep up with the flow of traffic, therefore causing a hazard for others drivers behind them?

"We haven't got our heads totally in the sand, we've got to try something, and three or four months we mght have to look at ourselves and say this was a wrong decision, but how long can we keep going on the way we're going, or do we try and change something?" he replies.

Geoff Ryan indicates it's been a tough sell to the drivers he employes to convince them of the merits of the 90km/h limit for their trucks.

"It's difficult, to say the least," he says

But he refers to the ongoing problems of finding, training and keeping experienced staff as one of the related issues which contributes to road safety problems.

"We've got a responsibility to the public, and our drivers, and our families and we've got our monkey on our back and something's got to change. The industry can't get drivers - so we're training people off the street - and no offence to them, they're capable people with caqpable trainers, but they can go from a light rigid vehicle to a B-Double within three or four years and be able to drive up and down the road a with 60 tonne vehicle at 100 kilometres [100km/h] - there's no room for error in that - and with that shortage of experience, it only takes one thing to go wrong, and there's problems."

Geoff Ryan says he expects most travel times for his company's fleet of trucks will only extend another 15 or 30 minutes, but they're also expecting a 15% drop in fuel costs across the board.

He reinforces that there's more at stake than jut econonics.

"We have to afford it - it's not 'can we' - we have to make a change, and we'll adjust our operations to suit. I reject claims that Coles, Woolworths, Alcoa, etc force us into pushing our trucks, that is the furthest thing from the truth... if anything's pushing us it's the Government and their costs and registration and all the rest of it.

"As far as our customers go they've been fantastic; they impose safety on us, they audit us - we've worked with Woolworths for 30 years... they've made a business out of us and they've supplied employment for a huge amount of people."

Brian Negus, the managing director of public policy for the RACV, says there has been mixed reports of how this kind of initiative works overseas.

"We're aware in Germany in particular and quite a few other European countries there are speed limits that are about 10km/h less than the general speed limit for cars, and some of the autobahns in Germany have a bigger differential.

"The evidence is still unclear - the evidence we'd had formerly was that differential speeds can be less safe; you've got people travelling at those different speeds and the traffic flow is interrupted by people running up the back of other people... in more recent years, and the German situation has been more prevalent for three or four years, the autobahns are certainly as safe as any other freeways or motorays around the world."

He says while the German example is based around the autobahns, the roads most trucks in regional Victoria are operating on are not safely divided autobahns at all.

"If we're looking at the average regional highway, some of them are four lanes divided but quite a lot are two lane, two-way undivided roads, and passing opportunities - as Graham ddd mention - hopefully become more available... but you could in fact find a truck at 90 and a lot of cars behind who can't get past because of double lines, sight distance or can't get around..."

Brian Negus says the issues and complaints against truck drivers have been discussed at an industry level and the Ryan's initiative, while difficult to study for indications of its effectiveness, will be watched closely.

"This has been put forward now with discussions we've had with the Victorian Transport Association... and certainly they've been concerned about the accusations against trucks running up too far against vehicles in front; having a differential speed will probably help that, as long as the drivers comply.

"The difficulty with having an individual company do this is it's going to be hard to actually gather the evidence as to what the real outcome is... we'll certainly keep a watch on this..."