On 6 June 2017 the Governor of Victoria, acting on the advice of the Government, made a new set of road rules for Victoria – the Road Safety Road Rules 2017 (Vic). I understand these new rules will come into force on 1 July 2017. Without checking every section one can infer that these are largely remaking the road rules in accordance with the nationally agreed Australian road rules. There is however, at least on new provision. Rule 79A, like the Road Traffic Act 1961 (SA) s 83 will introduce reduced speed limits when approaching or passing police and emergency vehicles in Victoria. The new rule 79A says:
79A Approaching and passing stationary or slow-moving police vehicles, emergency vehicles, enforcement vehicles and escort vehicles
- A driver approaching a stationary or slow-moving police vehicle, emergency vehicle, enforcement vehicle or escort vehicle that is displaying a flashing blue, red or magenta light (whether or not it is also displaying other lights) or sounding an alarm must drive at a speed at which the driver can, if necessary, stop safely before passing the vehicle.
Penalty: 5 penalty units.- A driver approaching a stationary or slow-moving police vehicle, emergency vehicle, enforcement vehicle or escort vehicle that is displaying a flashing blue, red or magenta light (whether or not it is also displaying other lights) or sounding an alarm must give way to any police officer, emergency worker, enforcement vehicle worker or escort vehicle worker on foot in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle.
Penalty: 5 penalty units.- A driver must not drive past, or overtake, a stationary or slow-moving police vehicle, emergency vehicle, enforcement vehicle or escort vehicle that is displaying a flashing blue, red or magenta light (whether or not it is also displaying other lights) or sounding an alarm at a speed greater than 40 kilometres per hour.
Penalty: 5 penalty units.- A driver who drives past, or overtakes, a stationary or slow-moving police vehicle, emergency vehicle, enforcement vehicle or escort vehicle that is displaying a flashing blue, red or magenta light (whether or not it is also displaying other lights) or sounding an alarm must not increase speed until the driver is at a sufficient distance from the vehicle so as not to cause a danger to the any police officers, emergency workers, enforcement vehicle workers or escort vehicles workers in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle.
Penalty: 5 penalty units.- Subrules (1), (2), (3) and (4) do not apply if the driver is driving on a road that is divided by a median strip and the police vehicle, emergency vehicle, enforcement vehicle or escort vehicle is on the other side of the road beyond the median strip.
- This rule applies to the driver despite any other provision of these Rules.
Sub-sections (2) and (3) are not particularly problematic. When passing a police or emergency vehicle with its hazard beacons activated, you must give way to the police and emergency workers who are on foot and must not drive past them at more than 40km/h.
Sub-section (4) gives some indication of when you can resume the normal speed limit.
Sub-section (5) tells us that if the vehicle is on the other side of the road, and there is a median strip between you and the emergency vehicle, then the rule does not apply. If there is no median strip then the rule does apply whether you are on the same side, or the opposite side of the road to the police or emergency vehicle.
Sub-section (6) provides that you do not commit some other offence by obeying this rule, so if there is some rule that says you must not slow down, or some argument that it is ‘dangerous driving’ to do 40km/h in a 110 km/h zone is defeated. All so far so good.
The problem I have is with sub-section 79A(1). That rule says that if you are approaching the vehicle displaying its warning beacons, you ‘must drive at a speed at which the driver can, if necessary, stop safely before passing the vehicle’. There must be a defined point at which you have ‘passed’ the emergency vehicle. It doesn’t matter how you define ‘passed’ – so for the sake of the argument let us define ‘passed’ as the rear of your car is now in front of the stationary appliance as shown below:
To be able to stop ‘safely before passing the vehicle’ the driver of the car has to be able to stop before he or she reaches the point shown by line ‘A’. Queensland Transport (https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/driving-safely/stopping-distances/graph/index.html ) publishes the following table of stopping distances.
If you are 1000m (1km) away from point ‘A’ you could be travelling at 110km/h and you should have no trouble stopping ‘safely before passing the vehicle’. As you get to within 100m you must slow down to 100km/h. At 50m you must be travelling less than 70km/h. At 30m from point A you need to have slowed to 40km/h. And as you get closer to point A you must keep slowing down if you are going to be able to safely stop before you get to point A. Eventually you will have to come to a complete stop because you will be at point A and it will be impossible to travel at a speed where you can stop before you pass the vehicle. If the emergency vehicle is moving slowly, the only way to travel at a speed where you could stop before you pass it is to travel behind, or beside, and at the same speed as the emergency vehicle. If you were to travel at 40km/h eventually you would be in a position where you could not stop before you passed the vehicle. I can’t see how s 79A(1) makes any sense at all.
Australian Emergency Law 
It would be great to have this rule applied in ALL States and Territories under the Australian Road Rules. This initiative, with some good marketing, will protect the lives of our emergency workers by providing better awareness of how to drive in the vicinity of emergency vehicles and incidents.
I can’t seeing this law as being enforceable. It has no clearly defined boundaries as to distances from the emergency vehicle at which point the driver must be doing 40kmh. As I see it any driver booked of this offence would have it thrown out in court on a lack of “real/circumstantial” evidence. More would be gained on an education approach to this matter. I just see this law as another knee jerk reaction by the government to raise revenue in the pipe dream of “towards zero”. Most drivers {I know I do} already react too and slow down when they see emergency vehicle lights and or siren’ whether in motion or parked on the road side. The real problem here are rubber neckers causing accidents whilst watching what’s going on at an emergency site.
Hi Gerald – let me clarify that this is by no means a knee jerk reaction to anything. Working groups from ALL involved services, unions and organizations have been involved in developing this law for over four years. The practicalities of prosecution will evolve but the platform is simply to give us the same basic OH&S rights as every other worker to a safe work place. The ethos is as far from revenue raising as it could possibly be.
I have a query about sub-section 2, especially regarding traffic management at an incident.
I’m a CFA volunteer in the Yarra Ranges area of Melbourne and we regularly do traffic management, i.e. close the road or reduce traffic to one-way, which requires us to be further away from where the emergency vehicles are parked in order to have enough line-of-site to safely manage the on-coming traffic.
How would you define the ‘vicinity’ around an emergency vehicle, as it pertains to sub-section 2?
Would drivers need to keep travelling at 40 until they are past the traffic control point (and not just past the emergency vehicle)?
What happens if the traffic control point is around the corner and out of sight of the emergency vehicle?
How do we as CFA volunteers report/enforce on this new law (especially if the police are not in attendance)?
I’m sure we’ll get some new SOPs about this from the CFA, but it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
One can’t define ‘vicinity’, the reason such vague terms are used, rather than specifying a precise distance, is that it allows flexibility given all incidents are different. I’m sure it would extend to traffic control points at either end of a accident scene and anywhere in between. I would think a court would find it an attractive argument that the effect of sub-section (5) is that the 40km/h limit applies between two traffic control points because in that stretch of road, the driver may have passed the vehicle but not all the ‘emergency workers’. Whether this can be enforced is another matter. You could record a driver’s number plate, but it would be hard to prove they were travelling at more than 40 km/h but you certainly could give evidence to police, and then a court, if there was some danger to you eg you had to jump out of the way so that they did ‘cause a danger’. Whether that would be sufficient for police to take action would depend on all the circumstances.
It seems to me Vic Roads do not even fully understand this new law. In answer to questions on if this applies to emergency vehicles located in a service road they have stated it does not apply as there would be a median strip. However the road rules have a definition for median strip that specifies traffic travelling in the opposite direction. For a service road the divider is defined in the road rules as a dividing strip, no mention of this is made in the new rule. RACV have interpreted this as meaning that the rule would apply for a service road that is intact separated from the main carrigeway. I am a fan of having a speed limit around emergency scenes, however I do not think this rule has been written very well at all. Also add the premiers statement of responding to an emergency as a parameter in his press release and this has created massive confusion.
For an explanation from Victoria’s RACV on the new rule, see https://www.racv.com.au/membership/member-benefits/royalauto/motoring/information-and-advice/new-rule-makes-road-users-slow-to-40km-h-when-passing-emergency-.html?cmpid=social%3Afacebook
And for an explanation from VicRoads, see https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/safety-and-road-rules/road-rules/a-to-z-of-road-rules/police-and-emergency-vehicles
Looking at an isue recently in the ACT where we dont have such a law, I came up on a Firetruck winding up but unable to do more than 80 in a 100 zone on a 3 lane road. I was actually waved passed, I believe to stop there being a traffic jam behind the emergency vehicle, which had 5 km to go to get to its exit.
Is there anything in law that says a) you cant overtake an emergency vehicle under lights and sirens if it is not going at the speed limit?
No, there’s nothing in the law that says you can’t pass an emergency vehicle. You have to give way to them and and not get in their way so there would be a problem if for example they wanted to turn right and had to wait whilst you passed them, but there is nothing to say you ca’t pass them if they are travelling at less than the speed limit.
Cannot work , will cause deaths on our road, stopped from 110 to 40 and caused accident with a car & truck, stupid, stupid f** rule!!!
Just wondering your thoughts on sub rule 6 over riding the exemptions given under 305 & 306. It would seem that another police vehicle or emergency vehicle would also need to slow down even if they had been exercising the relevant exemptions.
Sub-rule 6 says “This rule [ie rule 79A] applies to the driver despite any other provision of these Rules.” The irony is that s 79A(6) says it applies to everyone and r 306 says it does not apply to those that are exempt. They can’t both be right. It’s hard to believe that police would seek to prosecute a fire fighter or ambulance officer for driving past another emergency in excess of 40km/h. If they crash, on the other hand, it would be said they were not exercising reasonable care so r 306 doesn’t apply and r 79A would. Presumably the emergency services will want to slow when passing their colleagues so perhaps they should lead by example and slow down regardless of the interplay of r 79A and r 306. I suspect the issue will never arise.