The Heavy Vehicle Unit (HVU) has specialised knowledge in Victorian vehicle standards, driver fatigue and load restraints to help keep our roads safe.
Transcript: Get to know Victoria Police - Heavy Vehicle Unit (HVU)
[Sergeant Robert Mitchell]: The Heavy Vehicle Unit specialises in heavy vehicle use and some of the key areas are fatigue management, vehicle standards and load restraint.
It's quite unique legislation and it takes some specialist knowledge to be able to know what you're looking at and to be able to ensure compliance through enforcement activities.
A heavy vehicle in Victoria is anything over 4.5 tonne gross vehicle mass.
It also includes buses below that, so any bus that seats over 12 people.
Trucks that we would deal with would be anything from a removalist van to a flatbed, to a tow truck, to big B-doubles and road trains that move bulk right around the state.
So a typical day for us would be we’d identify a truck or a heavy vehicle on the road that looks like it might need some attention.
We’ll intercept it and we’ll go through the driver with drug testing, alcohol testing.
We'll check for fatigue compliance through work diaries.
We'll check the vehicle for vehicle standards and roadworthiness.
We'll check the load for mass, dimension and loading requirements.
There may be an enforcement outcome with the driver, like a penalty notice or a brief or a warning, but part of the bigger picture for us is the chain of responsibility.
And it's looking at the companies and making sure that all the people who are off the road and the responsible parties are doing what they’re supposed to do to make sure that their transport activity is safe.
Heavy Vehicle Unit have responsibility for the entire state so we can work anywhere in the state of Victoria.
We routinely go on regional deployments where we will go to a country town and work for four or five days. We routinely work main freight routes, so major freeways and highways.
We'll often base ourselves at a at a weighbridge because it's a safe working location and we can get the trucks off the road where we can spend as much time as we need to do our job and make sure they’re compliant.
The Heavy Vehicle Unit is broken up into 15 ORs (constables) that do the on-road work.
There's a team of detectives who staff the Heavy Vehicle Crime Investigation Unit and they'll focus primarily on chain of responsibility and primary duties where the heavy vehicle's at fault.
The thing I love about the Heavy Vehicle Unit is it's a specialist field.
We have a team of committed people who are passionate about what they do and we can bring that skill set in keeping the community safe and spread the road safety message in the heavy vehicle industry.
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Specialist roles and areas
Learn more about the HVU along with other specialist roles and areas for police officers.
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