DG Road Regs

This applies to you if you offer dangerous goods for transport, carry them, or accept them after carriage. Reg 273 defines a consignor as "the person who offers dangerous goods for transport in a vehicle referred to in regulation 274(1), and includes the manufacturer or his or her agent, duly appointed as such", and a consignee as "the person who accepts dangerous goods which have been transported" in such a vehicle. A manufacturer who hands a drum to a carrier is a consignor and carries consignor duties, however the transport contract is written.

Whether goods are dangerous goods is not a judgement call. Section 1 of the Act defines them as the commodities, substances and goods listed in the SABS standard specification for the identification and classification of dangerous substances and goods, which reg 273A carries as SANS 10228. If what you move appears on that list, you are in this Chapter.

Two things take you out of it. Reg 274(2) excludes dangerous goods transported in quantities that do not exceed the exempt quantities, which reg 276(2) ties to the emergency information code of practice. And reg 274A gives precedence to the Explosives Act, the Nuclear Energy Act, the Fire Brigade Services Act, the Mines and Works Act, the Environment Conservation Act, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the Hazardous Substances Act and the Fertilizer, Farm Feeds, Agricultural Remedies and Stock Remedies Act where a provision of this Chapter conflicts with one of them.

The Chapter follows the vehicle rather than the border. Reg 274(1) applies it to all vehicles registered in the Republic wherever they are, and to foreign-registered vehicles while they are in the Republic.

The penalty is in the Act, not the Chapter. Section 89(1) makes it an offence to contravene or fail to comply with any provision of the Act or with any direction, condition, demand, determination, requirement, term or request under it, which includes every regulation in this Chapter. Section 89(6) makes a person convicted of an offence read with any provision not separately listed liable to a fine or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year. Section 54 is the Act's own dangerous goods prohibition: no person shall, except as prescribed, offer for transportation in a vehicle, or transport in a vehicle, or accept after transportation in, on or by a vehicle, any prescribed dangerous goods. It reaches the consignor who offers and the consignee who accepts, not only the carrier.

Section 51 is the provision that decides who stands in the dock. Where a manager, agent or employee of an operator commits or omits an act that would have been an offence had the operator done it, the operator is deemed to have committed it, unless there is evidence that the operator did not connive at or permit it, took all reasonable measures to prevent an act or omission of that nature, and that it fell outside the scope of that person's authority or employment. Reasonable measures you cannot evidence are reasonable measures you did not take, which is why nearly every task in this record ends in a record somebody can produce.

Reg 283B makes your own paperwork the evidence against you. In a prosecution alleging that dangerous goods above the exempt quantity were transported, a document purporting to have been issued by the consignor or the operator stating the nature and quantity of the goods, or an extract from the packaging identifying the goods and any UN number on it, is prima facie proof that the goods were dangerous goods and that the quantity exceeded the exempt quantity.

The operational penalty usually arrives first. A traffic officer acting under reg 283A may enter the vehicle, demand the prescribed documents, demand information about the substance and the packaging, and determine the quantity carried. A load stopped at a roadside for want of a Tremcard is a late delivery, a demurrage claim and a customer conversation before it is ever a charge sheet.