Who's Driving on the Job? Occupational Road Users and the Risks We Miss
Reflections from the AIHS OHS Body of Knowledge event, Melbourne
For many workers, the road is not the journey to work — it is the work. Our team attended the Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS) OHS Body of Knowledge event in Melbourne, joining OHS professionals from across Victoria to deep dive into occupational road use — an area that affects far more industries than most safety plans acknowledge.
Who are occupational road users?
The session highlighted workers who are often overlooked when road safety is discussed. The list is broader than most people expect.
Traffic management workers are a particularly underserved group — standing for hours in live traffic, exposed to driver error, fatigue, and sun. Their safety is often handled at a contractual level but rarely examined through a genuine OHS risk lens. Farmers face long distances on unsealed roads and isolation that slows emergency response. Gig economy workers accumulate enormous road exposure but frequently fall outside traditional safety frameworks.
Key themes from the session
Visibility gaps
Many organisations don't count vehicle travel as a workplace hazard. Journeys between sites rarely appear in risk registers.
Regulatory patchwork
The overlap between transport law and OHS legislation creates confusion across industries and can lead to inaction.
Fatigue & scheduling
For healthcare, community services, and gig workers, demanding schedules directly increase road risk — and incidents are underreported.
Peer learning
Bringing practitioners from different sectors together surfaces insights no single-industry safety plan can produce alone.
Why it matters
WorkSafe Victoria and other regulators are increasing attention on work-related road safety. Compliance is a starting point, but a real shift requires treating the road as a workplace with the same rigour applied to any other hazardous environment.
Events like the AIHS OHS Body of Knowledge sessions build the professional knowledge and cross-sector connections needed to drive that change. If occupational road use is not yet on your organisation's safety agenda, it should be.
Temporary traffic management and occupational road users
Temporary traffic management (TTM) plays a critical role in protecting both workers and the travelling public, yet it remains one of the most complex and often overlooked areas of occupational road safety. Traffic controllers, construction crews, and utility workers operate daily in live traffic environments where the risk of vehicle strike, near-miss incidents, and fatigue-related hazards is ever-present. Inconsistent TTM practices across jurisdictions have long created confusion for both road workers and road users, contributing to unnecessary disruption and safety gaps.
The new Temporary Traffic Management Harmonisation Program aims to address this by standardising practices, signage, and training requirements across states and territories — reducing ambiguity, improving compliance, and ultimately creating safer conditions for everyone on and around the worksite. Systec has been engaged to work alongside local councils and traffic management companies to help navigate this transition, providing practical guidance and support as organisations adapt their processes, documentation, and workforce training to align with the new harmonised framework. For information on TTM training, visit Systec Traffic Management Courses.
Training access in regional areas
One of the most persistent challenges in TTM compliance is access to training for workers in regional and rural areas. For many councils, utility contractors, and road crews operating outside metropolitan centres, attending face-to-face training often means significant travel time, accommodation costs, and time away from work — barriers that disproportionately affect the very workers who are most exposed to road risk. In some cases, the cost and logistics of getting staff trained has led to delays in compliance or reliance on workers operating with outdated qualifications.
Recognising this, Austroads is progressively transitioning lower-risk TTM categories — including utilities and short-term low-impact works — to online training platforms. This shift is designed to make competency-based training more accessible without compromising safety standards, allowing regional workers to complete foundational units flexibly and closer to home. While higher-risk categories will continue to require practical, in-person assessment, the move toward online delivery for appropriate categories is a positive step in closing the training gap between metropolitan and regional workforces. Systec supports this transition and works with regional councils and contractors to ensure their teams can access the right training pathway for their role.