The Australian Transport Council (ATC) has confirmed that there will be changes to the approach to counting time when dealing with heavy vehicle fatigue.
The Chief Executive of the National Transport Commission Mr Dimopoulos stated that changes will come into effect once relevant state and territory governments pass the revised legislation.
Counting time provision that will be adopted in the legislation:
When counting time in a period, the time must not be counted from within rest time, but instead must be counted forward:
(a) if one or more major rest breaks** are relevant to the period, from the end of a relevant major rest break, or
(b) in any other case, from the end of a relevant period of rest time.
**Major rest break = 5 hours or greater