A round table article in the summer edition of IPWEA’s member magazine inspire has sparked a discussion on road safety.
The article Road Safety Round Table featured opinions from five industry professionals, looking at a range of topics around road safety, focusing on road crash data, freight, driver-less cars and local roads.
However, Shoalhaven City Council Subdivision Engineer Ian Dollery points to a lack of driver education as one of the key factors in the majority of road incidents.
The NSW Rural Fire Service member, who has spent a great deal of time travelling Australia's roads during his career, submitted the following letter: 
Whilst I agree that more needs to be done with regard to road safety in Australia, I believe that comparing Australia’s annual deaths per 100,000 population with the United Kingdom and Sweden is irrelevant as Australia has a far more expansive road network covering vast distances. The distances that we travel in Australia create an unusual tiredness more akin to boredom and impatience brought on by the long travel distances undertaken by inexperienced rural road standard drivers and on unfamiliar roads.
The article places emphasis on freight vehicles and the safety issues that the longer vehicles and the increased loads create. However, as a driver who travels freeways, highways, main and local roads frequently I believe that education is the biggest problem for drivers of both transport vehicles and cars. As a member of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service I have witnessed the carnage that can result and note that the drivers of both types of vehicles are often at fault – i.e a car can cause a truck to crash in trying to avoid the car (car driver at fault) or as seen in TV news recently where trucks are obviously travelling too fast for a corner (truck driver at fault) and sometimes both are at fault.
Transport vehicles, especially (but not exclusively) the semi-trailers and upwards, are all too often driving to a time deadline rather than a safety regime. Get transport and construction companies, no, legislate transport and construction companies to understand just how long it takes to go from point A to point B in the worst of conditions be it weather, road condition or traffic and make this plus a realistic percentage the time for the delivery. Then, we may get greater safety on our roads where heavy transport is involved.
As an example, I used to travel a great deal visiting councils in western NSW to train them in ways to improve public safety to reduce public liability claims (doing 150,000km in 18 months) and needed to ensure that I arrived at each destination on time without risking any life (mine included). To this end I modelled my travel time on the distance to each council site divided by my average travel speed plus a margin for delays (mostly this worked out at 10kph below the legal speed on the open road as this compensated for the very short distance at 50 to 60 kph through small townships plus 15 minutes). I was never late and never had to speed to get there.
There is much that can be done to improve road safety, which generally should involve the police pulling over more drivers for breaches of the road rules and less of the revenue raising speed breaches (in many cases a vehicle can be traveling at less than the legal speed limit which can result in a death due to poor driving skills under the given road conditions (rain, gravel, camber etc). Over time, drivers will not make the driving errors that when combined with speed usually end up involving a death on our roads. Reducing the speed doesn’t stop the poor driving incidents. No incidents is better than no deaths.
IPWEA Fleet Safe Safer Driver Program
IPWEA offers an online Fleet Safe Safer Driver Program that has been designed to create a formal program of targeted driver safety improvement, covering topics from driving in adverse weather, drowsy driving and driving at night to speeding, safe motorway driving and distractions.
The program provides the tools for fleet managers to reduce injuries, increase employee protection, improve productivity and save money.
intouch invited IPWEA’s partner in delivery of the online Fleet Safe Safer Driver Program, Stephen Haughey, XDrive Advanced Driver Training Owner, to comment on some of the issues raised in the road safety discussion.
Haughey says inappropriate driving speed, which includes driving too fast for the conditions, can be addressed through driver education.
“With regards to monitoring other road incidents, this is being addressed slowly and once again is a very subjective decision,” Haughey says. “Tailgating, as an example, is not as easily measured as speed and requires a degree of measurement – otherwise it is purely based on the opinion of the police officer.”
Haughey agrees that education can help increase driver awareness. However, he says that advanced car-control techniques, such as skid control, emergency braking and swerving manoeuvres, are relatively ineffective in real-world scenarios.
“These methods have been shown to not be as effective in practice as people would like to believe, and new research has proven these teaching methods to be ineffective, to the point where most state and federal road safety administrations and organisations no longer support these forms of driver training,” Haughey explains.
Driving a TAD differently
Haughey encourages drivers to “drive a TAD differently”, which calls on motorists to:
Think Different;
Act Different; and
Drive Different
“Education should address these issues from a very early age, dealing with various principles of speed, acceleration and braking as part of our maths curriculum and the dynamics of vehicle handling as part of physics and science,” he says.
“Developing these processes would enable younger drivers to apply these principles and understand vehicle behaviour, long before they are even eligible for a driver's licence.”
Plan your trip
Haughey agrees it is very easy for the average person to fall into the trap of calculating distance and time in factors or multiples, which can increase the risk of road accidents.
“This is easily explained due to the speed limits,” Haughey says. “As a simple example we say 100km trip, therefore that will take us approximately one hour. 100km traveling at the highway or open road speed limit of 100km/h, distance over time, one hour. Easy. 200km takes two hours, 300km takes three hours and so on.
“However, most people soon realise that we very rarely travel at the speed limit all the time, so as an average speed, we travel at approximately 80kmh, taking into account stops, traffic etc.
“This equates to a 20% differential. Therefore, our 100km trip actually takes closer to one hour and fifteen minutes, 200 km takes approximately two and half hours 300km closer to three and three quarters and 400km nearly a full hour longer or approximately five hours.
“This is the reason why many travellers are caught out when travelling long distances and end up driving the last hour or so of their journey in the dark and when they are most fatigued.”
“Fatigue to a large extent is self regulated and education can and will assist in reducing these incidents but cannot take all of these incidents away.”
Heavy transport
Touching on the issue of heavy transport and the industry’s responsibilities, Haughey says:
“Local and state governments as well as the Federal Government are working with the transport industry to avoid the incidence of trucks working to a time deadline. To this end, the industry has accepted the ‘chain of command’ rules that are being advocated. This will take the onus from the driver only, to the load master, scheduler and even the CEO of the company and has already made significant inroads into reducing the number of incidents.”
Do you know how to wear your seat belt?
Haughey believes there are a variety of important safety topics that are not adequately explained to the majority of new drivers.
“The wearing of a seat belt is a good example of this,” Haughey explains. “The vast majority of drivers have never been shown how to wear a seat belt properly, nor has the importance of this action been explained to them.
“Airbags and ABS braking systems are other important issues, which have not been adequately addressed.
“We are also faced with the dilemma from vehicle manufacturers, who wish to attract new buyers through innovation and technology, whilst not adequately addressing the safety concerns. Bluetooth audio and phone systems are a case in point.
“A lot more can and needs to be done, by all concerned – starting with drivers themselves.”
What do you think? Is education the most important road safety tool at our disposal? Join the discussion on Ask Your Mates, or tweet @IPWEAintouch.
For more information on the Safer Driver Program, email Stephen Haughey, stephen@xdrive.com.au.