https://www.policerecruit.qld.gov.au/international-police-recruitment
One for Star Down Under and the question is have you met or had an encounter with an ex UK police officer who has moved to live and work in Australia?
How does commercial vehicle enforcement differentiate from the UK DVSA enforcement for all types of commercial vehicles in the UK to the Australian equivalent?
How are drivers hours and work times recorded in Australia, is it entering data in a hand written journal/diary/electronically/ driver app/tachograph or by any other means?
How many hours per day can you drive, how much legal daily rest is required?
How much are the fines, are they paid immediately by the road side as in Europe via a court deposit then the driver can attend court at a later date to contest the charges but will pay more if they lose the case.
Most foreign drivers in Europe don’t attend court as it’s money lost on wages , the cost of hiring a translator, defence costs and travel costs to the court and back.
The deposits in Europe are paid in cash by the driver or the company wires the transfer via Western Union for large amounts directly to the police station.
Back in the 1990’s I have heard of telephone number sized fines in Europe especially in the Basque area of Northern Spain in to the region of £20,000, a similar tachograph offence in the UK may be a warning of not to do it again or a court appearance and a minimal fine.
The officers wear cherry red berets, I would always hear drivers warning others that the red hats were down the road doing a control.
Another hot spot for eye watering fines or deposits was the Catalan area around Valencia and Barcelona with the traffic police having a notorious reputation for road traffic enforcement regulations and laws.
In the UK a foreign driver must pay an on the spot fine, anything very serious they can detain the driver and seize the lorry in a compound.
Yes, a family friend of my in-laws. Admittedly many years ago, but he hated Queensland Police. He was as straight as a die, with no grey in his view. It was either right or wrong.
He resented having to start from the same point as a new recruit with no experience. He did not agree with non-specialist cops carrying a pistol, he also disliked the different way of policing. The thing that really went against his grain was the corruption, that reached to the highest level of government. (For more information Google Fitzgerald enquiry). That drove him to instructing at the police academy.
Being unfamiliar with your system, I am in no position to compare.
New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia have a linked system called Safety Cam, refered to by drivers as revenue cam, which is an ANPR setup that can instantaneously compare recorded information with work diary entries.
Queensland has its own scheme, not as complex as Safety Cam but equally expensive. Western Australia has its own way of doing things but it has changed since I worked there. They will accept the eastern states’ Diaries, which need to be filled out unless a driver is prepared to take a 24 hr rest, at the border eastbound.
Northern Territory have thrown the responsibility back to workplace health and safety. The Territory has often found ways to circumvent federal directives. 
Work diary, I still have difficulty not calling it a log book. The name changed when availability became monitored. Log books and work diaries are government printed and sold. Work diaries, unlike log books, are recorded against a licence number with the completed tome needed to be produced when applying for a new one. Time, place and milage need to be recorded at each change of activity. There are only two activities, work and rest.
There are different schemes, all rediculous bs. Courses can be completed to work extended hours. I’ve done the course and extra module for supervisors. All I came away from the course was how to recognise when you are tired, FFS, I already knew that before doing a one day course.
No fatigue management course only allows 12 hours work in 24 and no more than six consecutive days worked.
Advanced fatigue management allows up to 17 hrs work in 24 , I don’t recall the full details and couldn’t be arsed looking them up. I have a pretty cavalier atitude to fat cats who have never done a day of real work in their life, telling me how to do my job. If I’m tired I’ll pull up for a camp, regardless of how long I’ve been driving. The regulations at times force you to rest when you’re not tired and work when you are.
Horrendous, obviously heavy vehicle transgressions are worse than serious crime. Armed robbers and rapists can expect custodial sentences of up to five years, less remissions.
Go ten minutes over your log book hours and expect a fine equivalent to a month’s wages.
Transgressions can be dealt with by way of summons or fixed penalty notice. The latter offering 21~28 days to pay (dependant upon state issued) or elect to go to court. FPNs are deliberately designed to be cheaper to admit guilt than go to court, even if you win. 99% of enforcement for all vehicles is about revenue raising, not safety. Cops, task forces and other agencies set the operatives quotas.
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What a fascinating insight and very interesting, thank you for taking the time to write it, I found it very educational to compare the different countries.
In the UK we have WIMS, weighing in motion sensors under the road surface, this means the authorities don’t have to pull over a vehicle to get it in to a check point to be weighed or at an official DVSA check point that has a weigh bridge, if a weigh bridge is not available they have a portable system of mats rolled out to drive over.
They can also use an arable farm or public weigh bridge, or possibly a factory or warehouse facility that has one to use.
The law permits a driver to be illegally over loaded with too much weight if he or she can prove on their journey that the intention was going to a premises that has a weigh bridge for the load to be checked.
For me personally I would not want to be in this position as most customers have a weigh bridge on site to check it after loading.
Apologies for being boring and waffling on, but in the 90’s the corruption was quite rife in European countries.
Suspicious neighbours of road traffic police in Portugal became suspicious of the unexplained wealth of the GNR Brigado Transito or traffic police.
They had swimming pools, new cars, luxurious holidays abroad and jewellery, it transpired in the court cases that they had committed fraud by using dodgy weigh bridges to add on an artificial weight to only take advantage of foreign drivers to say they were illegally over weight when they were not.
The amount of run in’s I had with these guys was enough to write a book about it.
Some rogue and unscrupulous officers had two record and receipt books for traffic fines or court deposits, one was the official book, the other book the dodgy book, maybe for their personal use, to that i have no clue.
As an example of the bizarre and brazenness behaviour,they tried to fine me for running on a truck ban for a public holiday or religious festival when normally you could not drive on the evening before the holiday started such as at 22.00, until the next evening until 22.00, or possibly for two days or more.
You would have to find somewhere decent to park up with a shower and access to hot food or cook your own food in the cab.
The day they stopped me there was no truck ban,(Driving ban) as all the trucks were flying past me and they didn’t stop a single one, I refused to pay them and I literally emptied all the contents of my cab on to the roadside to prove I had no hidden cash,after an hour of arguing they finally gave up, I could smell liquor on their breath, I would always see Portuguese and Spanish traffic police adding brandy, rum or whiskey to their coffee at the road side cafes then drive away on their motorcycles and patrol cars.
The next thing for tachograph enforcement in the UK and Europe is technology to be used where the commercial vehicle unit (CVU)of the traffic police in the UK, and DVSA enforcement can simply park up at the side of the road or on top of a motorway bridge and not stop any vehicle to inspect the tachograph records and possible offences, but view the relevant data as the vehicle is going past them.
I’m not sure how it works but the data is transmitted via GPS or Bluetooth to their computers in their vehicles.
Note how the authorities can now view 56 days of data instead of 28 days.
A recent video submitted by an Irish driver who operates in the UK and internationally has cited the fines or court deposits to be paid to the enforcement authorities in Europe that can be thousands of Euros or more depending on the tachograph offences, for an owner driver it could bankrupt the business, from a small to large fleet of vehicles, it will certainly impact their financial implications.
Nearly two months of history compared to about one month’s data they can get hold of.
