Hauliers must play their part in reducing road deaths

Last year 336 people lost their lives on the country’s road, which represented a decrease of 29 on the previous year. As the drive to further reduce the carnage on the country’s roads gathers pace, the haulage industry can and must play its part. John Loughran reports.

Road deaths in Ireland have dropped by 30 per cent in the period 1997 to 2007, according to the Road Safety Authority. A total of 472 people lost their lives on the roads in 1997 compared to 336 in 2007.
2007 was one of the safest years on Irish roads in over 40 years. Only 1961 and 2003 were safer when a total of 335 road deaths were recorded in both years. Twenty-nine fewer people were killed on Irish roads in 2007 compared to 2006 when 365 people lost their lives according to the RSA. This represents an eight per cent reduction in deaths on 2006.

In recent weeks the Government has gone on record as saying that it wants to see a 5 per cent reduction in the 2007 fatality figure by the end of the year and called on all the stakeholders to play their part in achieving this goal.
While it is generally accepted that the haulage industry’s road safety record is very good, hauliers can still make a significant contribution towards reducing the carnage as they go about their work.
The country’s roads is the road haulage industry’s workshop, and hauliers must adopt best practice in every aspect of their working life

A recent survey conducted in Dublin by tyre maker Continental has shown that a significant percentage of hauliers out there aren’t adopting best practice on the country’s road. Consequently, they are putting their own lives and the lives of other at risk every day.
The study concluded that more than one in 10 truck drivers in Ireland are guilty of “tailgating” – driving too close to the vehicle in front.
Tailgating is an extremely common cause of accidents and injury, especially in winter when wet and slippery road surfaces make it harder for vehicles to stop quickly. The Continental Tyres survey was carried out on several key roads around Dublin: on the N4 near Lucan; the N11 near Bray; and the N7 near City West.
At the N7 site, Continental Tyres enlisted the help of Tele-Traffic – the leading supplier of laser speed gun technology – who provided a speed gun with special software that can read the distance between vehicles in both metres and seconds, as well as the speed of each vehicle.

In one 30-minute period, a total of 10 trucks were observed tailgating – four were driving too close to another truck and the other six were driving dangerously close to cars. Anything less than a two second gap between vehicles is deemed as a tailgating offence. The most extreme case involved an articulated truck travelling behind a VW Golf at 89km\h and 88km/h respectively, the truck was only 0.88 of a second or 18.9m distance behind the Golf.
By easing back slightly on the throttle, hauliers could eradicate thousands of potentially fatal situations every day of the week. Yes, the need to meet deadlines is always a factor in the haulage industry, but as the Continental survey shows, a couple of seconds could be the difference between life and death.

In many respects the difference between life and death situations can be down to driver attitudes and behaviour. While there are thousands of drivers out there that are a credit to their profession, there is a small, yet significant cohort that drive aggressively on the roads.
We have all seen them - the truckers
that speed, over take on dangerous bends, tailgate, overload their trucks, drive on excessively worn or under inflated tyres and bring the industry into disrepute.

In a recent case before a Court in Wales, an Irish truck driver was convicted for tampering with the speed limiter on his truck. The Court heard that the practice was commonplace in Ireland.
Anecdotal evidence would certainly back up this claim. On countless occasions this writer, has seen loaded articulated lorries speed past at speeds in excess of 90 km per hour, only to catch up with the truck half a mile further down the road, stopped at traffic lights or in heavy traffic. It begs the question: Is it really worth it?

Then, their are the truck drivers who persist in using their hand held mobile phones, while driving, even though it is an offence to do so. Hands free kits and blue tooth connections are now readily available and relatively cheap, yet countless truck drivers persist in flouting the law.
And what about those truck drivers who mount excessive spot lights on their cabs. No doubt, all those extra lights go down well with the judges at the various Truck Shows both in Ireland and the UK, but they represent a serious road safety threat to on coming traffic at night.

Truckers that want to accessorise their vehicles could do a lot worse than installing blind spot mirrors in a bid to cut down on pedestrian fatalities. Those truckers with articulated lorries could look at the possibility of fitting reversing cameras to their trailers. Systems that cut down the spray from trailers are another worthwhile road safety feature that could be installed on most HGVs on the road.
While blind spot mirrors are relatively inexpensive to fit, this writer concedes that reversing cameras, etc are costly to install. Perhaps the time has come for the insurance industry to take a look at discounts for safety conscious hauliers, who go to the trouble and cost of fitting these devices.

However, all the safety systems in the world won’t help to reduce the carnage on our roads if that cohort of drivers, continue to drive aggressively? If more and more haulage companies signed up to the highly successful How’s My Driving? Scheme, it would be much easier to weed out the culprits.
It would also give haulage company owners and managers a better insight into what their drivers are getting up to, out there on the open road every day. Food for thought?