Who pays for our roads? A case for charging light vehicles

February 22, 2021

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ The most common ways of paying for roads are one or more of the following four: Through general taxes and rates Through tagged (“hypothecated”) taxes on road related things like vehicle purchases, fossil fuel purchases, and distances travelled Through tolls on specific roads or pieces of […]

Charging light EVs: a new tax?

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ The announcements from South Australia and Victoria of ‘special’ road use taxes for light electric vehicles (EVs) represent an important step forward for road funding in Australia. But with the sobriquet ‘special’ comes concern that the charges might be unusual and arbitrary. How real are these […]

Charging light EVs: a punitive and contradictory policy?

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ With the proposals to charge electric vehicles (EVs) for their road use have come some vocal protests to the idea, essentially characterising the policy as punitive or contradictory. But if the EV charges serve the same function as fuel excises, and are in proportion to what […]

Take a break – you’ve earned it

December 18, 2020

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ Sun, sand, sea. Christmas and New Year. Fun, family, relaxation? Kids home from school, bills, things to get done. Increased work tempo, to finish up before, or to cope with the demands of the season of giving. Fitting everything around the increase in ‘social’ engagements, both […]

Fatigue: the nature of the beast

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ In its 2019 issues paper Effective fatigue management regulation, National Transport Insurance (NTI) reported that (in 2017) fatigue was still the leading contributing factor in single-vehicle fatality-causing crashes, and a major contributor in 9.8 percent of all major accidents. The National Road Safety Strategy put the […]

Teamwork: there’s more to fatigue than a tired driver

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ Technology is maturing a wide range of tools for detecting, recording and responding to fatigue and distraction. The promise of digital technologies to also deliver tamper-resistant and indelible electronic evidence and records – reliable sources of truth – is also being realised more and more. These […]

Managing fatigue: what’s that about?

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ The Heavy Vehicle National Law is clear that managing fatigue is a priority. Drivers are expected to manage their worktime to reduce the risk of fatigue, while operators and others through the chain of responsibility are expected, at the very least, to support them. It’s about […]

Can managing the speed of trucks manage the pace of change?

November 26, 2020

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ A good telematics system puts you in the cab with your driver. By providing objective facts, it is a really powerful tool for managing speed, providing insight into both where, when and for whom speeding or erratic speed-keeping might be a challenge. But with this power […]

The fast-moving elephant in the room: speed is good

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ You can’t really talk about speed being bad without acknowledging that it is also good. There is the thrill of speed, of course, and there are times and places where people can indulge that thrill, and that is OK. But there are also the practical benefits […]

Face it: speed and speeding can be bad

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ It is a source of constant disappointment to policy makers, regulators and enforcement agencies that the question of ‘why is speeding bad’ not only needs to be answered time and again, but that the whole premise is challenged. That aside, in a nutshell, the problems with […]

Riding with the driver: the operator’s role in managing speed

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ If a driver decides to plant their foot on the accelerator, there’s not a lot the people back in the office can do about it at that moment in time. But there are things that can be done before and after to make it more likely […]

Road management: a collective responsibility?

October 6, 2020

By: Peter Carr EROAD Director, Regulatory Market Development ANZ Everyone using the roads has a part to play in managing them. When you think about roads as a system, it becomes clear that the system is too complex for any one player to direct. There are four parties that have roles in managing roads: The […]