Traffic offences in NSW
Heavy vehicle offences
Heavy vehicle law is not traffic law with bigger fines. It is a national safety regime with its own duties, its own risk categories, and liability that runs up the chain to the operator, the scheduler, the consignor and the loader. The driver intercepted at the weighbridge is often not the only person facing a charge.
The law changed on 1 August 2026, and there is no grace period
The Heavy Vehicle National Law Amendment Act 2025 commenced on 1 August 2026. It is the largest change to heavy vehicle law in more than a decade, and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator has confirmed there is no transition period for compliance. If you are dealing with a notice, the first question is which version of the law applies to the date of the conduct. Call 0407 171 626 (Alicia) or 0407 534 594 (Michelle).
Catron Simmons Lawyers act for drivers, owner drivers, operators and other parties in the chain of responsibility across Local Courts in New South Wales, from Sydney and the Hills District to the regions.
The Heavy Vehicle National Law applies to vehicles over 4.5 tonnes gross vehicle mass. It operates in New South Wales through the Heavy Vehicle (Adoption of National Law) Act 2013, and it is enforced here by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator and by NSW Police. It does not apply in Western Australia or the Northern Territory, though it catches vehicles from those jurisdictions once they cross into a participating state.
Two things about it surprise people who come from ordinary traffic work. Liability is not confined to the driver: every party who could have exercised control or influence over the transport task can be charged for the same breach. And the size of the penalty depends heavily on how the breach is categorised, which is a technical exercise that is frequently done wrongly at the roadside.
On this page
Current as at August 2026
What changed on 1 August 2026
The amendment package passed the Queensland Parliament in November 2025 and commenced on 1 August 2026. The main changes affecting anyone who might end up in court:
An unfit to drive duty, not just a fatigue duty
The old duty was confined to driving while impaired by fatigue. The new one covers fitness to drive generally, taking in illness, injury, medication, mental health, drugs and alcohol. It applies to every heavy vehicle over 4.5 tonnes, not only to fatigue regulated vehicles over 12 tonnes, and it reaches employers, prime contractors, operators and schedulers who must not pressure a driver to drive while unfit.
NHVAS replaced by heavy vehicle accreditation
The National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme has been replaced by a two tier framework: general safety accreditation as the baseline, and alternative compliance accreditation for operators seeking concessions. Basic Fatigue Management and Advanced Fatigue Management give way to alternative compliance hours.
Work diary record keeping simplified
Record keeping requirements and the written work diary have been revised, and electronic work diaries updated to match. Work diary obligations still attach to fatigue regulated vehicles over 12 tonnes, even though the fitness duty now reaches further down.
The penalty schedule has moved twice
Penalties were indexed on 1 July 2026 and then the amended offence provisions took effect on 1 August. Around 50 penalties went up, some of them doubling, and around 21 went down, mostly administrative ones. Any figure published before August is out of date.
Mass, dimension and loading provisions were also revised. The proposed increase to the general height limit was not part of this commencement and is left to future amendment.
Which law applies is the date of the conduct, not the date of the notice
Notices are still being issued now for conduct before 1 August, and the amended provisions do not apply retrospectively. On any matter straddling the commencement it is worth checking that the offence charged and the penalty sought actually match the law as it stood on the day. It is the sort of thing that gets missed when a whole regime changes at once.
The structure of liability
Chain of responsibility and the primary duty
Every party in the chain owes a primary duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the safety of their transport activities. The chain is wide: employers, prime contractors, operators, schedulers, consignors, consignees, packers, loaders and unloaders, and the executives of corporate parties who owe a separate due diligence duty.
The duty covers mass, dimension, loading, speed, fatigue, vehicle standards and maintenance, and now driver fitness. It is not confined to the road: it reaches conduct at the depot, in the scheduling office and at the loading dock, and a party can be prosecuted without any incident having occurred at all.
The three categories of primary duty offence
- Category 1 is the most serious, reserved for engaging in conduct recklessly with knowledge that it is likely to cause death or serious injury or illness. It carries the largest fines available under the law and imprisonment for an individual.
- Category 2 covers a failure to comply with the duty where the failure exposes someone to a risk of death or serious injury or illness.
- Category 3 is a failure to comply with the duty, without more.
The maximum penalties run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for an individual and the millions for a corporation, and they are indexed each year. Because the figures change annually and the offence provisions changed in August, this page does not reproduce them. The current NHVR penalty schedule is the authoritative source, and it is the document to read alongside your notice.
Why this matters to a business, not just a driver
A prosecution of an operator or a scheduler is not a traffic matter. It is an investigation, usually with notices to produce, records seized and interviews sought, and it runs on a very different timetable from a court attendance notice. If the regulator has contacted your business rather than your driver, take advice before you produce anything or answer questions. What you say and hand over in the first fortnight tends to shape everything that follows.
How you are dealt with
How the penalties are structured
Risk categories
Most mass, dimension, loading and fatigue offences are graded by the seriousness of the breach: minor, substantial, severe, and in some cases critical. The category is not a matter of impression. It is determined by how far over the limit or outside the requirement the breach falls, and it drives the penalty by a large multiple.
Getting the category wrong at the roadside is one of the most common and most valuable errors in this area. A breach categorised as severe rather than substantial can be several times the fine, and on mass breaches it can attract the additional per percentage loading on top. Check the calculation before anything is paid.
Infringement or court
- An infringeable offence can be dealt with by an infringement notice. The infringement amount is set at 10 per cent of the maximum penalty a court could impose.
- The more serious offences are not infringeable at all and must go to court.
- You can elect to have an infringement dealt with by a court. As with any election, the court can impose a larger penalty than the notice, so it is a decision to make on advice.
- The regulator also has a formal warning, improvement notice and enforceable undertaking pathway, and in the right case an undertaking is a far better outcome than a conviction.
Indexation
Maximum penalties and infringement amounts are indexed on 1 July each year using ABS figures. Any table you find online that quotes an amount without a date is unreliable, and any table published before 1 August 2026 predates the current offence provisions as well.
The most commonly charged
Fatigue and work diary offences
The law imposes a positive obligation not to drive a fatigue regulated heavy vehicle while impaired by fatigue or otherwise unfit, and a detailed set of maximum work and minimum rest requirements, with an obligation to record work and rest accurately.
Fatigue offences are graded minor, substantial, severe and critical according to how far outside the limits the breach falls, and the penalties climb steeply across those categories. The applicable hours depend on whether you are running standard hours, under an accreditation, or under an exemption, but the categories and the penalty structure work the same way whichever set of hours applies.
Two things that catch drivers out
- One period, several offences. You can be charged more than once for the same stretch of time. Exceeding maximum work time and failing to take the required continuous rest in the same 24 hours are separate offences and are routinely charged together.
- Counting time is unforgiving. Work and rest are counted in blocks, and any part of a block that is worked counts as the whole block. Seventeen minutes of work is counted as thirty. Drivers who fill in a diary from memory at the end of a shift, rounding to what feels right, create the evidence used against them.
Defences do exist, and they are technical rather than sympathetic. Split rest, delayed short rest breaks, exemptions and the accreditation under which you were operating all bear on whether the requirement said to be breached actually applied to you that day. That is worked out from the diary, the schedule and the accreditation documents, not from an explanation at the roadside.
Weighbridge and intercept
Mass, dimension and loading
Driving, or permitting someone to drive, a heavy vehicle that does not comply with mass, dimension or loading requirements is an offence graded by risk category in the same way. On mass breaches the maximum can be increased by an additional amount for each percentage point above a substantial overload, which is why a severe mass breach can produce a figure well beyond what the base category suggests.
Permits and exemptions cut both ways
A vehicle operating under an access permit, notice or exemption, an oversize overmass combination or a low loader for example, is measured against the conditions of that authority. Step outside those conditions, by route, by time of day, by pilot requirements or by configuration, and the vehicle can fall to be assessed against standard mass and dimension limits instead. A combination that was perfectly lawful under its permit becomes a severe or critical breach the moment the permit does not cover what it was doing.
That is the single most expensive trap in this area, and it is also where the best arguments are. Whether the authority covered the movement is a question of construction, and the conditions are frequently drafted loosely.
Measurement
Weighing and measuring are governed by prescribed procedures, and the law provides for measurement adjustment to account for equipment tolerances. Where the figure sits close to a category boundary, the method, the equipment and the adjustment applied are all worth examining before a category is accepted.
The part that affects your licence
What it means for the driver personally
Demerit points
Not every heavy vehicle offence carries demerit points, but a number do, and up to four points on a single offence is possible, doubling in a double demerit period. A professional driver has a fourteen point threshold rather than thirteen, which sounds generous until you consider how many kilometres and how many intercepts a year the job involves.
Ordinary traffic offences still apply
A truck driver who speeds, drinks or tests positive to a drug is dealt with under the NSW Road Transport Act 2013 like anyone else, and usually harder. Speeding penalties for heavy vehicles are set at a higher rate than for light vehicles, and exceeding the limit by more than 45 km/h carries a larger maximum fine again. See speeding and camera offences, drink driving and driving with an illicit substance.
Speed limiter tampering and engine remapping are treated separately and seriously, and they are actively targeted. So is possessing or using a speed measuring evasion article, which carries a substantial fine and nine demerit points on its own.
Your licence and your livelihood
New South Wales has no work licence, restricted licence or hardship licence. If you are suspended or disqualified you cannot drive at all, and for a professional driver that is the entire consequence of the matter. A suspension can be appealed to the Local Court within 28 days, and on a Transport for NSW suspension filing the appeal pauses it so you keep working until it is heard. See licence suspension appeals.
Note that on an appeal against a police roadside suspension the test is exceptional circumstances, and holding a licence as part of your job is not exceptional. That is a hard thing to tell a truck driver and it is the law.
Contesting it
Defences, and what they actually require
Defences under this law are narrower than in ordinary traffic work and they are almost entirely evidence based. Broadly, the arguments available are:
- No control or influence. That you were not in a position to prevent the breach. This is the natural argument for a party at one end of the chain, and it turns on contracts, instructions and actual practice rather than on job titles.
- Reasonably practicable steps. That everything reasonably practicable was done to ensure safety. This requires records: policies that were actually followed, training that actually happened, scheduling that actually allowed the run to be done lawfully.
- Risk was eliminated or minimised. That appropriate steps were taken to manage the relevant risk, including by adopting a registered industry code of practice.
- The requirement did not apply. On fatigue, the hours you were properly operating under. On mass and dimension, the scope of the permit or exemption.
- The measurement or category is wrong. Frequently the most productive line, because it does not require a defended hearing to be worth running.
The paperwork is the defence
The reasonably practicable arguments do not work as assertions. The regulator’s position is that a safety system has to be present, suitable, operating and effective, and a policy that exists in a folder but is not followed on the ground fails that test. If you are an operator, the audit to have is the one you conduct yourself before someone conducts it for you.
Section 10 is not always available
For certain heavy vehicle offences, including severe risk breaches of mass, dimension and load restraint requirements and driver fatigue offences, the court has no power to make a section 10 order if section 10 has already been applied to you for another applicable heavy vehicle offence in the five years before. It is not discretionary. On a repeat matter that changes the strategy entirely, and it is worth knowing before a plea is entered.
Why Catron Simmons
Why operators and drivers choose us
We check the category first
Before anything else, we work out whether the breach has been correctly categorised and whether the measurement supports it. On mass and fatigue matters that single question is often worth more than the rest of the case combined.
We understand the enforcement side
With a background in prosecution and in highway patrol, we know how intercepts are conducted, how briefs are assembled and what the records are expected to show.
Driver and business, together
A single intercept can produce a charge against the driver and an investigation of the operator. We can advise on how the two interact, including where the interests diverge and separate representation is the right answer.
You deal with a principal
We are a boutique firm. You talk to the solicitor who will appear for you, not a call centre, and we are contactable outside business hours.
Common questions
Heavy vehicle offences: your questions answered
What counts as a heavy vehicle?
A vehicle with a gross vehicle mass over 4.5 tonnes. Fatigue regulated heavy vehicles are a narrower group, principally vehicles over 12 tonnes and certain buses, and work diary obligations attach to that narrower group. Since 1 August 2026 the duty not to drive while unfit applies to the whole 4.5 tonne group.
Can my employer be charged for something I did?
Yes, and so can the scheduler, the consignor, the loader and the operator. Every party who could have exercised control or influence over the transport task can be liable for the same breach, and a party can be prosecuted whether or not anything went wrong. That is the point of the chain of responsibility.
What did the August 2026 changes actually do?
They replaced the fatigue only duty with a broader duty not to drive while unfit, covering illness, injury, medication and mental health as well as fatigue, and extended it to all vehicles over 4.5 tonnes. They replaced the accreditation scheme with a two tier framework and replaced Basic and Advanced Fatigue Management with alternative compliance hours. They simplified work diary record keeping and revised mass, dimension and loading provisions. Penalties were reindexed and around 50 increased.
How much is the fine?
It depends on the offence and on the risk category, and the figures are indexed every 1 July and were restructured on 1 August 2026. Rather than quote a number that will be wrong by next winter, check the current NHVR penalty and infringement schedule against your notice, and check that the category on the notice is right before you accept the figure.
Should I pay the infringement or go to court?
Paying is quick and avoids a court record, but on a heavy vehicle infringement it also accepts the category, which is the thing most often wrong. If the category is overstated, or if the vehicle was operating under a permit that the officer did not account for, court can be worth it. The court can also impose more than the notice, so it is a decision to take on advice.
Will I lose demerit points?
Some heavy vehicle offences carry demerit points and some do not. Where they apply, up to four points on a single offence is possible, and that doubles during a double demerit period. Professional drivers have a fourteen point threshold rather than thirteen.
The regulator has asked my business for records. What should I do?
Take advice before you produce anything. A request for records is usually the opening of an investigation rather than an administrative formality, and what you produce and say early tends to define the case. There are also questions about legal professional privilege and about who within the business should be answering, and they are much easier to deal with before documents leave the building than after.
Is an enforceable undertaking better than a prosecution?
Often, yes. An accepted undertaking commits the business to specified safety improvements and avoids a conviction, and the regulator publishes the outcome. It is not available for every matter and it requires a serious proposal rather than a promise to do better, but where the safety failure is real and the business is willing to fix it properly, it is worth raising early rather than after a plea.
Keep reading
Related traffic law pages
Speeding and camera offences →
Drink driving and PCA charges →
Driving with an illicit substance →
Driving under the influence →
Negligent driving →
Reckless and dangerous driving →
Licence suspension appeals →
Removing a disqualification →
Driver licence offences →
Infringement notices and fines →
Get started
Intercepted, or under investigation? Call us.
Send us the infringement or court attendance notice, and the permit, diary or accreditation documents that go with it. We will tell you whether the category is right, whether the requirement applied to you at all, and whether paying, electing or negotiating is the better course.