Safely immobilising heavy vehicles and trailers

Across Queensland, unsafe heavy vehicle and trailer immobilisation has led to numerous fatalities and serious incidents involving injury and/or significant property damage when heavy vehicles roll away or unintentionally move.

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ) conducted a safety campaign to identify the causes of unsafe immobilisation, provide businesses with resources on how to manage these risks and to ensure compliance with work health and safety laws.

From 2016 to 2018 WHSQ inspectors carried out more than 400 assessments, with improvement notices issued on the following matters:

• workers not safely immobilising the truck
• workers not coupling and decoupling trailers safely
• inadequate maintenance, plus the risk of working under trucks and trailers
• absent or inadequate system of work
• inadequate worker training, information, supervision or instruction.

Businesses need to ensure that vehicles and trailers are safely immobilised, especially when workers get out of, are near, under or on the truck or trailer.

From mid-2019, WHSQ will be focussing on safety around vehicles and mobile plant at retail sites, such as supermarkets and shopping centres to examine and reduce the risk of people being hit by mobile plant and vehicles. Inspectors will be looking at how an organisation manages these risks and whether they are being safely managed, and where these are not being managed Inspectors will take enforcement action.

Resources

• Safely immobilising heavy vehicles and trailers campaign report (PDF, 0.37 MB)
• Safely immobilising heavy vehicles and trailers checklist(PDF, 0.46 MB)
• Russell Transport case study: Retrofitting a hand-brake alarm
• Industry solution – Hydraulic hoist and vehicle isolation
• Short film – Coupling and de-coupling trailers safely
• Short film – Safe systems to immobilise heavy vehicles and trailers

Further information

• Vehicle loading cranes self-assessment tool (PDF, 0.25 MB)
• Webinar – Safely immobilising heavy vehicles and trailers
• Safety alert QLD – Heavy vehicles and trailers hitting or crushing workers
• Code of practice – Managing Risks of Plant in the Workplace Code of Practice 2013 (PDF, 1.04 MB)