The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator says education formed part of 21.8 per cent of roadside intercepts in the June 2026 quarter, compared with 12.6 per cent in the September 2023 quarter, according to figures supplied directly to Which Way To Go on Friday 30 October.
The comparison covers Q1 2023–24 to Q4 2025–26. It represents a rise of 9.2 percentage points — or about 73 per cent relative to the starting share. Those are different ways of measuring the same change and should not be confused.
The response follows WWTG’s interview with NHVR chief executive Nicole Rosie and driver advocate Rod Hannifey after their 24 September B-double run from Dubbo to Brisbane. During that discussion, Rosie described an increase in education activity, prompting WWTG to request the underlying figures and comparison periods.
More education during intercepts
The NHVR says the number of roadside intercepts involving education increased by 92 per cent between the two quarters. Total roadside intercepts increased by approximately 11 per cent over the same period.
That indicates education was being recorded at a growing proportion of intercepts, rather than the change simply reflecting a greater number of vehicles being stopped. The figures do not, on their own, establish that warnings, infringement notices, prosecutions or other enforcement actions fell.
For the full 2025–26 financial year, Safety Compliance Officers delivered 10,265 hours of on-road education through roadside intercepts, the regulator said. Its published target in the 2025–28 Corporate Plan was 7,150 hours — a difference of 3,115 hours.
The NHVR also reported 9,295 hours of education delivered by its Stakeholder Engagement team through roadside information hubs, toolbox talks, forums, commercial events, site visits and field days.
Those are different measures. The regulator said its stakeholder-engagement metric was updated in 2025–26 to better reflect education delivered across industry. The new total should therefore not be treated as a directly comparable year-on-year increase without checking the methodology.
Education does not mean enforcement has stopped
The distinction matters to drivers and operators. Education during an intercept can help explain the rules or identify a compliance problem, but the published education share does not tell us what other action occurred in those intercepts, if any.
The NHVR’s guidance on fatigue breach responses, for example, describes responses ranging from education and formal warnings to infringement notices and court-imposed penalties, depending on the circumstances.
In the September interview, Rosie said education had increased while enforcement and prosecutions remained broadly unchanged. The quarter-to-quarter education figures now supplied show a longer-term trend, but they are not a like-for-like test of every element of that statement. A clear comparison of education and enforcement over the same period remains important.
The next question
WWTG has asked the NHVR to clarify an inconsistency in the percentage it supplied for performance against its annual education-hours target, and to confirm the baseline for a separate shorter-term comparison. Neither disputed percentage is used in this report.
The regulator has also said further information requested following the Rosie–Hannifey interview is still being gathered.
For drivers, the practical question is not simply how often an officer offers education. It is whether the regulator’s approach is becoming clearer and more proportionate at the roadside, while still responding firmly to serious safety risks. These figures help describe the changing mix of recorded roadside activity, but do not answer that wider question by themselves.
Source: NHVR written response to WWTG, 30 October 2026. See the NHVR 2025–26 Annual Report and WWTG’s original Rosie–Hannifey interview.