Work health and safety in the road freight transport industry

This report provides an overview of the work health and safety status within the road freight transport industry, an industry primarily engaged in transporting freight using trucks on public roads. Road freight transport is a sub-sector of the road transport industry.

The main findings of the report were as follows:

• There was a 48 percent decrease in the annual number of work-related injury fatalities in the industry over the last four years. Despite this, fatality rates in the road freight transport industry were roughly ten times higher than those for all industries across the eight years up to 2011.
• 78 percent of the work-related injury fatalities in the Road freight transport industry occurred while driving or being driven in a vehicle on a public road.
• There were around 4000 non-fatal serious workers’ compensation claims requiring a week or more away from work each year between 2002 and 2011.
• The majority of serious workers’ compensation claims were caused by manual handling or falls rather than vehicle incidents.