Road safety is a popular topic of conversation within road transport industry associations of late. I’m not one to suggest that truck drivers should not be competent in their role – far from that.
Sadly, I feel too many truck drivers are seeking an income rather than performing a job that appeals to their activity preferences.
It would not be an unreasonable presumption on my part to consider that many people think I’m out of my mind to be still wanting to drive trucks at this stage of my life. The simple fact of the matter is that no other activity appeals to me – beyond travel.
I enjoy the simple act of piloting such a piece of machinery doing a service that society has a desperate need of, and I have no desire to have other people financially support me.
It’s only recently that I have succumbed to the cash for cans system because it disappoints me that we need a welfare system to stop people littering the environment.
Sadly, the world seems to have lost its determination to be fair and just to fellow inhabitants. We are currently in the process of honouring the bravery and determination of our forebears of 80 years previously, whose combined actions finally reversed one of the biggest threats to world freedom. Sadly, that world freedom is still under threat.
Unless individuals stand against bullying, have and pursue the ideals of justice and fair play, and only support economically those of like ideals, we will fall into an abyss similar or worse than that which threatened us.
So, what relevance has this to do with our current Australian road transport situation? I consider that the current push to “just” train truck drivers, to be dishonest and a continuance of the current unfair practice of “just” holding truck drivers responsible for our road safety performance.
Driver training? There is a suggestion floating about that in future, drivers upgrading their licence from one vehicle size to a higher one must undertake a good number of hours of online learning. Me being a sceptical soul, I wonder how much addition theoretical information is involved in moving from HR to MC.
I’m no fan of transferring face-to-face contact / training to an impersonal computer. As I said in a past issue, one big issue with the Australian driving public – heavy vehicles and light – is our poor sense of social responsibility. Are computers the reason or simply a response?
I’ve just renewed my White Card. The only option was to do it online. I considered it something of a farce – essentially a tick and flick performance on road practice. I’ve even seen a report from a person designing a simulator to train truckies – even he maintains it’s not a real substitute for on road driver instruction.
One of the greatest flaws to our road safety outcome is the new national attitude of selfishness. I am strongly of the view that selfish people can’t be good drivers. From the physical aspect – control and such – maybe yes.
But good driving is so much more. It must be about a sharing and considerate attitude. The new Australia is about winning and being in front. Driver training must encompass the full spectrum of the driving population to be successful and just.
Nationally we spend billions of dollars so that our athletes win on the world stage. There is the industry implication that better renumeration will reduce truck driver fatalities. Does that translate to us being respected as considerate and sharing personalities?
Over the decades of my involvement in this industry, many drivers better remunerated than myself have sadly been involved in accidents. Many drivers better remunerated than I have considered themselves underpaid.
We must comprehensively train all road users. The vast majority of that training has to be face-to-face. The current road safety outcome is an indictment on all Australians.
It is an indictment on those shallow personalities who devise such phrases as every K over is a killer – knowing full well that speedometers are not accurate anyway; thereby creating frustration and irrational motoring behaviours in others with consequential impacts on road safety outcomes.
It is an indictment on the Commodore driver on Sunday May 26. I was undertaking a keep fit walk along the local road around two in the afternoon, keeping to the edge of the bitumen verge, which was probably one-and-a-half metres wide. This person drove between me and the fog line.
What were they trying to prove? They weren’t in the best pursuits of good safe driving practice and it’s a fair indication of the lack of good driving attitude that prevails.
I’ve read with interest comments attributed to Professor Ann Williamson reported in the previous edition. I’ve been vocal on fatigue management for eons. I contend it is one of the most concerning issues facing this industry, in conjunction with our operators having to share their workplace with numerous incompetent other road users.
There are a considerable number of industries whose members need to perform outside of humanity’s diurnal regime. However, road transport is unique in that its operators do so in a solo situation at speed and with only their alertness keeping them and others out of harm’s way.
Very often I suggest, especially when seeing NTI’s accident analysis, the fact that so much of the transport task involves work outside humanity’s diurnal regime has an impact.
The good Professor considers 144 hour weeks to be excessive, but that is variable depending so much on whether those hours are mandated, whether they are nocturnal and whether there is a better option to use rest time.
If one has to lay up roadside to conform to a regulation, rest time can have little value. My experience rules out for me many less hours of nocturnal operation, but I have undertaken, at my wish, 14 hours during diurnal periods.
I consider there needs to be restriction on driving hours simply so that drivers do not get into some Olympic-type of situation of competitiveness that would create risk to self and other road users.
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KEN WILKIE has been an owner-driver since 1974, after first getting behind the wheel at 11. He’s on his eighth truck, and is a long-time Owner//Driver contributor. He covers Rockhampton to Adelaide and any point in between. His current ambition is to see the world, and to see more respect for the nation’s truckies. Contact Ken at ken@rwstransport.com.au