Road transport is a high risk occupation, with fatality involving a heavy vehicle occurring every 10 days, accounting for 40% of all work fatalities in Australia. In spite of aiming for the safest road transport industry in the world improvements achieved don't include truck occupants — their statistics remain static — while 58% of road transport fatalities involve ancillary occupations. We talked to industry experts about improving safety management.

The use of technologies such as cameras and data analysis have a role to play in preventable incidents, as the following examples show.

3 real life truck driver safety improvement case studies

Adam Gibson from the National Transport Institute cites these real life case studies illustrating how transport businesses can proactively tackle workplace safety. These examples target single vehicle rollover incidents, which represent 13‒14% of serious loss truck crashes on Australian roads.

Factors involved in truck rollovers

  • Inappropriate speed: 27% of all rollovers and the 3rd highest cause single vehicle crashes after fatigue (40%) and distraction (35%).
  • Inexperience: the only way for drivers to learn rollover speed limits on cornering is through experience.

These 2 case studies from the forestry sector illustrate how businesses need to address risky behaviours.

Case study 1 — visibility enables control of risk factors

Problem: woodchip slinger loading of trucks piled loads into one corner of the tray, causing uneven weight distribution that contributed to tipping on corners.

Solution: the business empowered the slingers by attaching a camera to cranes/straddle fillers so they could see and control where the load was going into the tray.

Outcome: 80% reduction in fleet rollovers.

Case study 2 — information plus group dynamics can change safety behaviour

Problem: loads of sawn logs accounted for high numbers of single vehicle rollovers on bends in high country roads.

Solution: the business harnessed data from mandatory heavy equipment vehicle control monitoring of the effects of braking to tell drivers how close they were to rollover. To back this up a public leader board and quarterly reports played into group dynamics and competitiveness to change the drivers' braking behaviour.

Outcome: truck kilometres between crashes increased from 600 kilometres to 22 million without a rollover.

The leading causes of truck driver deaths are fatigue (35%), followed by inattention (30%) and inappropriate speed (17%). Where crashes occur between vehicles the fault is nearly always with the driver of the other vehicle.

Case study 3 — leading in-cab monitoring by example

Driver monitoring systems provide visibility of driver behaviours (such as signs of fatigue and inattention) but how this surveillance is implemented is key to whether drivers put a hat over the dashboard camera or not.

Problem: even with active in-cab monitoring drivers may ignore the system, only responding when they believe it will trigger in minutes (alerted by micro sleeps or talking on phone, for example).

Solution: in a clear demonstration of how leadership is linked to outcomes the business owner of a trucking company installed the monitoring system in his own car and circulated the results.

Outcome: drivers were encouraged by example to adopt this safety measure.

Telematics as a road transport safety tool

John Gordon from Transport Certification Australia also confirms that telematics support road transport safety across a number of applications and are increasingly specified in road transport contracts as a condition of employment.

This exchange of data between vehicles and other locations has evolved from GPS tracking technology and can deliver information on consignment tracking, maintenance requirements, fuel usage, driver fatigue and visibility of safety incidents via inward and outward facing cameras.

This data is used to identify risks, provide safe drivers' scores, generate risk and safety reports, and — importantly — to identify opportunities to make improvements. Gordon stresses the need to incentivise improved safety behaviours; knowledge of being monitored isn't sufficient in itself.

Methods of incentivisation may include

  • toolbox talks
  • safe driving competitions
  • financial incentives
  • buddy drivers
  • minimum performance requirements.

The importance of fit for purpose truck driving training

Greg Cain from the Victorian Transport Association is leading the movement towards equipping novice drivers with the skills to avoid becoming statistics. Based on successful overseas models the VTA developed the Driver Delivery Program, an 8 day practical experience model that matches the licence sought with experience behind the wheel in challenging situations.

This approach develops appropriately skilled drivers who then need onboarding by the around 40 various road transport sectors to ensure they have the specific skills required for the type of driving they will be doing.

Cain also stresses the importance of mentally safe workplaces, and the VTA has partnered with the multi-awarded Gallagher Workplace Risk team to develop standards and tools for facilitating cultural change where needed in the high pressure road transport industry.

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