The report relied on by the government to question the link between truck drivers’ pay and safety is not academically rigorous and relies on an industry survey of “opinions and feelings” reported as fact, a US transport economics academic has said.  Related: Malcolm Turnbull hits election gear as truck drivers rally in Canberra  The stinging rebuttal comes as the Senate passed a government bill late on Monday evening to abolish the tribunal that set minimum pay rates for truck owner-drivers.  The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, has cited the 2016 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report for the employment department as evidence there is “little to no link” between truckies’ pay and safety, despite the fact it noted that several studies found a statistically significant link between remuneration and road safety.  PwC conducted a survey which found 82% of industry participants did not believe the road safety remuneration tribunal (RSRT) would have an impact on safety. It concluded “there is not enough evidence to conclusively prove that the road transport order has had an impact on safety outcomes given the multiple causal factors affecting road safety”.  Prof Michael Belzer, a transport economics academic who conducted a study that found a strong link between pay and safety, has reviewed the PwC and concluded its claims on safety “should not be taken seriously”.  Belzer said PwC only surveyed 96 truck drivers, in part due to the Transport Workers Union refusing to distribute the survey because of complaints with the questions that he said seemed justified.  As a result “results are biased toward the opinions of everyone but the truck drivers— the employers of drivers, the hirers of drivers, and those who pay the employers and hirers”, he said.  He said the survey questions “ask for opinions and feelings rather than documentable facts, but [PwC] reports the results as facts”.  PwC’s claim there was “a strong view from freight companies and owner driver representative stakeholders consulted and surveyed that the [RSRT] system has not had an impact on safety outcomes to date” was a “remarkably unscientific statement”, Belzer said.  The survey found 56% of industry representatives indicate that there have been no changes in work practices in the brief time the RSRT has been in operations. Belzer said the same statistic suggested that almost half the respondents said the order had changed work practices, which he described as “a remarkable effect”.  PwC’s statement there was not enough evidence to “conclusively prove” road pay minimum orders improved safety “runs afoul of the broad consensus of scholarly research that economics does drive safety”.  Belzer pointed out even the PwC report showed “a remarkable decline in heavy vehicle fatal crashes in the first year of the RSRT, during which [it] issued one order”.  The PwC report said that decline in accidents was influenced by other factors, including the operation of national heavy vehicle law, which came into force in February 2014. It also noted when crash data was controlled for the population or kilometres travelled, safety outcomes actually deteriorated.  Belzer said his research team’s study of a large US non-union carrier had found for every additional 10% in driver pay rate the probability of crash declined 40%.  “Higher remuneration unambiguously leads to safer highways,” he concluded.  A spokesman for Cash said “Prof Belzer is not an impartial participant in this debate, having been a long-time activist for the American Teamsters union someone who has regularly been used in Transport Workers Union (TWU) campaigns in Australia.  “The evidence of the devastation caused by the RSRT’s order is self-evident. It cannot be disputed by questionable analysis by the TWU’s favourite American academic.”  PwC questioned the applicability of studies such as Belzer’s, which was based on pay of employees, to the RSRT, which sets pay for owner-drivers, who are independent contractors.  The PwC report opposed setting minimum pay rates for independent contractors in the trucking industry due to a “significant cost to the economy ... with any potential safety benefits significantly outweighed by the associated costs”.  It concluded “the increase in labour costs will lead to an increase in the price of road freight, which will in turn lead to a reduction in demand for road freight”.  “The reduction in road freight will reduce demand from hirers and employers of drivers for driver services – therefore some drivers will lose their jobs.”  Labor’s employment spokesman, Brendan O’Connor, said the Senate’s decision to scrap the RSRT was an “extraordinary, disproportionate and dangerous given the body of evidence that links pay and safety on our roads”.  An Essential poll for the TWU found that when told road safety remuneration orders could reduce accidents on the road by 28%, a majority of respondents (51%) wanted the RSRT’s powers strengthened or kept the same.  Related: Labor and Greens battle government over minimum pay rates for truck owner-drivers  However, the figure of a 28% reduction in crashes was an assumption of the PwC report for the purposes of modelling, rather than a finding that such a reduction would occur.  The infrastructure minister, Darren Chester, has announced the $4m redirected from the RSRT to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) will be spent on “new targeted safety measures including monitoring of heavy vehicles with a national network of cameras”.  “I have asked the NHVR to outline to all state transport ministers next month a plan to integrate more than 70 camera sites into a single national monitoring system,” he said.
Academic says survey Coalition used to dismiss claim that truck driver pay affects safety is based on ‘opinions and feelings’