WORK-RELATED ROAD SAFETY - Parliament of NSW · work-related road safety to be held this afternoon. These partnerships have involved the STA YSAFE Committee, the Australian Transport

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WORK-RELATED ROAD SAFETY

Proceedings of a seminar held at Sydney, Thursday 8 Fe,bruary 2001

CONTENTS

Opening Address Mr Grant McBride MP, Chairman, STAYSAFE Committee

Reflections on the 'Televerket' (Swedish Telecom) Experiment Dr Nils-Petter Gregersen, National Road & Transport Research Institute, Sweden

Observations on Fleet Safety in the United Kingdom and Australia Dr Will Murray, University ofHuddersfield, United Kingdom

Can Haddon's matrix be extended to account for work-related road use?

Mr Ian Faulks, STAYSAFE Committee & Dr Julia Irwin, Macquarie University

Safer Vehicles Save Lives Mr James Holgate & Mr Phil Sochon, Roads and Traffic Authority

Benchmarking in Fleets Mr Peter Gialantzis, Lumleys Insurance

General Discussion

Related papers

Brehmer, Gregersen & Moren (1991) Group methods in safety work

Gregersen (1997) Road safety measures for professional drivers: A comparison of four different safety measures

Misumi (1978) The effects of organizational climate variables) particularly leadership variable and group decision on accident prevention.

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR Thursday 8 February 2001

Misumi (1982) Action research on group decision making and organisation development

Anderson & Plowman (1999) An integrated approach to fleet safety in the workplace

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR 2 Thursday 8 February 2001

Opening Address by Mr Grant McBride MP, Chairman, STAYSAFE Committee, at the seminar on workplace driving safety, Parliament House, Thursday 8 February 2001

On behalf of my colleagues on the STA YSAFE Committee, I would like to extend a warm welcome to the participants in the seminar this afternoon, and a particular welcome to our speakers.

The range of topics that will be covered in this afternoon's seminar on work-related road safety is truly global, including discussion of approaches in Scandinavia and in the United Kingdom, as well as Australia. The speakers will address issues of theory and issues of practical implementation. And the speakers will bring perspectives from public agencies, from fleet operators, and from insurers.

Above all, as evidenced by the attendance at this afternoon's seminar, I'm sure that there will be an even greater range of insights, experiences, and anecdote that will emerge from the almost 100 participants. To that end, the panel discussion involving the speakers and the audience should be a most exciting finale to the seminar presentations.

I've asked, as part of the contribution of the STAYSAFE Committee to the seminar, for you each to have been given an information pack containing not just copies of the speaker's papers that are available currently, but also a selection of relevant papers and reports concerning to work-related road safety matters. Some of those documents are authored by tlie speakers today, the authors of other papers and reports might not be known to you. I hope that you will find these documents of interest and assistance. It is the intention of the Committee to reprint a number of those papers and reports in the record of this afternoon's proceedings.

As I conclude, I would like to acknowledge the partnerships that have enabled this seminar on work-related road safety to be held this afternoon. These partnerships have involved the STA YSAFE Committee, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the Australian College of Road Safety, the ACT Government's Department of Urban Services, and the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety at the Queensland University of Technology. It is through these partnerships that Nils Gregersen and Will Murray have been able to have the opportunity to be here in Sydney and speak at this workshop.

I'm sure you will have an entertaining and informative afternoon.


REFLECTIONS ON THE 'TELEVERKET' SWEDISH TELSTRA EXPERIMENT

Nils-Petter Gregersen National Road and Transport Research Institute, Sweden

A quick look at issues associated with 'drivers at work'

I will start by giving a brief overview. For those of you who are scientifically interested, an article appeared in the last issue of Accident Prevention and Analysis by a couple of Finnish colleagues, Henke Summala and others. He has done studies on professional drivers, truck drivers, and looked into their accident patterns. He has also made a review of some knowledge. I looked at that as well of some of the reviews on current knowledge in this area, and I will try to summarise it.

SLIDE 1:

There is no general overrepresentation of fatigue in truck driver accidents: 3-5% per cent of all accidents and truck-driver accidents are fatigue-related. But there are some methodological problems, of which you are well aware. It is very difficult to state the cause if the accident is fatigue-related, but the problem is equally large in all road-user groups.


However, many drivers report fatigue problems. In a survey conducted by Sumrnala among truck drivers, 35% reported that they had dozed off at least twice during the last three months, which is evidence of severe problems.

Inexperienced and young truck drivers are over-represented in accidents and fatigue-related accidents. Even if there is no general over-representation in fatigue-related accidents, inexperienced and young truck drivers as a specific group are over-represented.

There is a higher incidence of accident involvement after prolonged driving. For this reason the European Union and the United States have a 1 0-hour maximum driving time per 24 hours. Norway is even better with nine hours per 24 hours. I was working to address truck driver safety with a truck-driver training program. We were addressing the fatigue problem. It is an interesting problem, because foreign workers who were working for this big oil company I was in were so eager to earn money that they were driving all the time, with no breaks whatsoever. They did not have any working hours or rules. When they got tired they got out of the vehicle, went under in the shadow, slept for an hour, got up, then drove. They had severe problems with fatigue-related accidents.

SLIDE2:

There is a relationship between health status, prolonged driving and fatigue, especially for those with chronic diseases such as diabetes. Drivers with diabetes suffer more often from driving fatigue than those who do not have diabetes.

Lack of compliance with driving time regulations is very common. Different studies show different patterns, but up to one-third and even two-thirds of drivers break the rules.


According to studies it is also common for truck drivers to believe themselves able to cope with fatigue problems. It is not necessary to have rules about working hours because they can handle the situation. More than 60% of the drivers think they can handle it.

Fatigue detectors have been developed, as you are well aware. Some researchers believe that it will take quite a long time before reliable systems are on the market. If you ask the drivers, they say that they do not want it; 4 7% of them are negative to this kind of equipment for different reasons. Some believe that they can handle the situation themselves, and others believe that they cannot rely on such systems.

Earlier I referred to inexperienced drivers. Novice young male and female drivers have a higher rate of accident involvement at the beginning of their driving careers than they do later in their careers.

SLIDE2A:

I did not find better statistics than city bus drivers involved in accidents. When you go into the new role as a professional driver you again start to develop from a novice driver to one with experience and, correspondingly, a reduced accident involvement.

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR 6 Thursday 8 February 200 I

SLIDE3:

These Nordic statistics are a comparison between different road users or vehicle categories and their accident involvement for one million kilometres. I do not know if they are comparable to the Australian situation, but they reveal a low accident involvement of petrol tankers, a low accident involvement of taxi drivers in injury accidents, and a comparable involvement of private car and truck drivers. Bicycles, pedestrians, bus drivers are higher, and motorcycles.

SLIDE4:

Henke Summala asked truck drivers in Finland what they believed caused truck -driver accidents. The most common reply was technical faults. The next was traffic environment, the next was vehicle manoeuvring, then fatigue.


SLDIE:

If we compare that with accident analysis work, you can see that attention and anticipation, which was in the lower part of the former figure, is on the top. Vehicle manoeuvring is further down on the former picture, but it is second here. Fatigue was very high on the former, but it is very low here. Technical faults, which were on the top of the former figure are quite a low share of the accidents on this figure. Drivers have a very strange opinion of the causes of truck-driver accidents.

The Swedish Telecom study

Four different measures were compared in the Telecom study.

SLIDE 6:


Driver training A driver-training measure was examined, which consisted of driving range skill training but not critical situation handling, rather handling the car at very low speeds. It was not a very big safety issue, but rather a cost-effective issue to learn to know where the comers of your vehicle are to avoid damages that are incurred in narrow places. Skid training is a common problem in Sweden. We have long winters, we have very low section roads and we have to address this problem specifically. We use the skid car equipment. I am not sure whether you are aware of it, but the car application used for skid training can also be applied to heavy vehicles. It is a pivot-wheel type of system. You can hydraulically adjust it to raise the car or truck a little above the ground, not totally from the surface, but the weight on the tyres is a little lighter and the pivot wheels take the force instead. You can decide what kind of friction you want and you can use different friction on different wheels. This is the equipment we use.

We also used commentary driving, which is a technique that many of you know, where the driver is reporting orally what is happening. Commentary driving is an education method where Ieamer drivers tell instructors continuously about what they are doing, what they are seeing, what they are thinking and the risks they anticipate. The idea is that the instructor is sitting beside the driver and is giving feedback all the time on what is correct and what is wrong. It is a tool to develop preventive driving through visual search patterns, understanding traffic situations, risk awareness and the increase of safety margins.

Finally, stopping distances are a type of practice to make drivers aware of stopping distances. This picture shows one application of the stopping distance practise. The driver is driving at a low speed and breaking hard on a dry surface. He is asked to estimate his own breaking distance on a low friction surface at the same speed. Large rubber obstacles are put on the driving surface and the driver tries to stop at the cones as quickly as possible. A substantial number of drivers actually underestimate their breaking distance. You can go on with raising the speed to a higher speed and let the drivers try to estimate how much the speed influences the breaking distance on a low friction surface. Most drivers actually underestimate the impact of the speed increase. This type of practice may be used to compare empty or fully loaded vehicles, worn out tires and good tyres, all kinds of differences. But it is a skid practice which is perhaps not as applicable here but it was in our country.

SLIDE 7:


Group discussion Group discussion was the second technique that we compared. We had small groups of 7-10 drivers following a very specific program for group discussion, starting with defining different road safety problems. Some 7-10 people were talking about their road safety situations, trying to develop or declare what they have experienced concerning road safety problems. The discussion situation was a group of 7-10 drivers but without any professional or external discussion leader. One driver in the group was appointed to lead the discussion and had a short introductory course on how to do that, but the group discussion was only between fellow drivers who were working together. They were asked to define road safety problems and to make as long a list as possible of different road safety problems that they have experienced, and from this list develop a list of suggestions in terms of what the company could do for them to improve the situation. The company had promised to do everything it could to meet the requests from the drivers.

They were producing a list of these measures to the company. They were also making a list of the measures they can take as drivers to improve the situation for them and for the company, the costs of the company as a whole. From these types of discussions, they were handing a list to the company and ending the group discussion with making a note of a promise to themselves of things they can contribute to a situation by doing this and that and putting the note in the pocket and ending the group discussion there. It was a little more detailed and structured than this but I do not want to go into details because of the time.

SLIDE 8:

Safety campaigns There was a third measure, campaigning, with five occasions during the year adjusted to the season, showing video films, knowledge tests, season-related themes of darkness, icy roads, bicyclists, wildlife, etc., adjusted to the seasons in which these types of accidents are most frequent.

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR IO Thursday 8 February 2001

SLIDE9:

Incentives There was also the bonus system, rewarding accident-free driving. They had a bonus system where the group of drivers got monetary reward they could use together for some common event, buying some equipment for their leisure, paying for a trip or something like that. The sums in the bonuses were quite low so it explains the poor result, I think.

SLIDE 10:

The design of the study shows that there were five groups, with almost 1,000 drivers in each group. Four groups had these measures and one control group had no measures at all. We made accident studies on the internal accident register of the company, which was very good,

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR I 1 Thursday 8 February 200 I

so we could follow everything very carefully. They also had registers of the mileage of their vehicles and we followed the accident involvement after the measures were carried out.

SLIDE 11:

These were the results: Group discussion and driver training were significantly improved. The bonus system also improved a little but not scientifically significant. So what we are looking at is group discussion and driver training.

The most important question here is: Why did we get such good results from the driver training and group discussions? I will focus on the training and discussion part here. Y au should also be aware that the type of training we performed here is only one type. We did not compare it to different types of driver training, but we compared these measures between each other. The reasons they were beneficial is not quite clear but we have discussed it quite a lot. Earlier I introduced the difference between skill training in critical situations and insight and awareness training. We have focused on the awareness training to get behind the traditional way of thinking that a skilled driver is always a safe driver. This is not true because a skilled driver may be an unsafe driver due to what he is using his skills for. I put out some different alternative results of training in part control skills, which is the traditional way of handling driver training.

It could reduce the risk due to better ability to solve critical situations. It could also increase risk due to use of the new skills for motives other than safety, and it could increase risk due to overestimation of own skill. That is why we were very careful about skill training and tried to use insight training instead. I think one of the main reasons we achieved such good results

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR 12 Thursday 8 February 200 l

was because of these motivational problems. It is a special problem. We looked into this in different kinds of private groups: Young male drivers have a special problem. They have very special motives when they are driving. We also looked at professional drivers. These are some examples of motives that may be involved in driving. Most drivers are not very interested in increasing their safety because they experience every day that they can drive every trip without an accident. So individually they are not very motivated to increase their safety. Instead, when they are driving they are trying to get benefits out of the other motives which are rewarded instantly. These are some examples. You can see that some of these motives give improved safety as a secondary effect, and some of them reduced safety.

One focus of the training concept in the Telecom study was to try to enforce good motives, to try to make drivers realise the benefits-for instance, the economical aspects of the company-if they drive in an economically good way. We showed that by showing the fuel consumption in different driving styles. They could save petrol; they could also save costs for the company and they could also save lives by driving safely. That is just one example. We also tried to address the overestimation problem by different techniques.

The group discussion story is very interesting. It emerges from the history of Lewin in 194 7 who tried to change the eating habits among families in America. I have also referred in my study to a Japanese researcher, Misumi, who used a group technique amongst bus drivers and shipyard workers, and reached very good results on accident reduction. It is also being used in Sweden for health improvement amongst school youngsters, trying to make them change their eating habits, drug habits, smoking habits and things like that with very good results as well.

I think we got these good results for several different reasons. One is that the company got the opportunity to show that it has a commitment to safety. It promised to do something about all of the countermeasures and suggestions.

Another aspect is that there may be an effect of these measures carried out by the company. A third explanation is that drivers actually make personal decisions to perf.orm an improvement here. From a theoretical point of view some researchers, Fishbyne and Ison, who state that if you are going to change a behaviour the first thing you must do is introduce an intention to do it. This group discussion and the personal decision introduced this personal intention to change behaviour. If you do not have this intention, you will have problems.

The most important part was that the discussion made the group norms visible. There is a kind of pluralistic ignorance, at least among those drivers, that safety was not an issue; that it was not permitted to talk about this; that it was not the accepted group norm. By making this safety aspect of driving visible and discussed it breaks this pluralistic ignorance concerning safety, and made it an allowable topic to discuss among the drivers. I think that was one of the main reasons we had the good results. It also gave the drivers an opportunity to discuss and to share experiences and information about safety. That is, in very brief terms, a little information about this, and some reasons why we believe the effect was so good. There is I think some material among the things that you have received about this project. If not, you could ask me afterwards and I will arrange something for you.


Some findings on truck drivers' accident involvement

. No general over-representation of fatigue, 3-5% of truck and of all accidents (methodological problems) .

. Many drivers report fatigue problems (34°/o dozed off at least twice< 3.months)

• Inexperienced and young truck drivers over-involved in accidents and in fatigue accidents

• Higher accident involvement after prolonged driving . EU and US= lOb max driving time per 24h (Oman ... )

. Some relations between health status, prolonged driving and fatigue (plus diabetes)

• Non-compliance with driving time regulation is common . Common that truck drivers believe themselves able to

cope with fatigue

• Development of reliable technological fatigue detection device will take many years (may not prevent as much as expected. 4 7o/o negative)

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Percent of city bus d•i¥ers Involved in accidents, by eiXper.ience

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Injury accident risk by vehicle type

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Drivers view on truck accident causes

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Traffic environment

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Fatigue

Weather conditions

Speeding

Attention/anticipation

Other road users

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Other reasons

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Falling asleep

Attack of illness

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Actual causes, truck accidents

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Driver training: (Mixed theory and practice)

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Bonus: (Rewarding accident-free

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OBSERVATIONS ON FLEET SAFETY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND AUSTRALIA

Dr Will Murray . Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety -

Queensland (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology

Dr MURRAY: Thank you. It is a real pleasure to be here. This morning some of you were at a novice driver safety forum and some of us were at a fleet safety forum. Interestingly, it is worthwhile for me to share the two main issues that came up for group discussion, which I was inspired to do by the thing that came out of the Swedish Telecom study, in terms of using group discussion methods.

The two key issues in terms of fleet safety that came out of that were, firstly, actually selling the ideas to companies to actually put the stuff in place and how to actually promote the issue as a big issue that we should consider; and, secondly, actually trying to frame fleet safety as an occupational health and safety issue and an issue whereby employers have a duty of care to put systems in place from a health and safety perspective. Those are the two things that came out of this morning's discussion.

SLIDE 1:

'

What I would like to do for the rest of today is to focus on four key areas. I do not know about in Australia and in Australian universities, but in the United Kingdom in the last few years we have gone towards a learning outcomes best approach. What that means is that you


•.·

set learning outcomes that people who come to your sessions should be able to do those things or understand those things at the end of the session. I have four learning outcomes this afternoon. The first one is that-to be honest I need to do some blatant selling of my employers. I need to take a minute of your time just to promote my employers here in Australia and my employers in the United Kingdom. Hopefully at the end of what I have to say you will see the need to focus on this, have some reasons why we should focus on this issue, both from a United Kingdom perspective and an Australian perspective. The third outcome, if you like,. that I was hoping to get away with is to have a slightly better understanding of what some of the key issues are facing both the United Kingdom and Australia. When I refer to key issues, I am particularly focusing on key issues from the point of view that you can actually practically go and use this stuff and implement it. Finally, I hope we can identify some ways forward and some practical steps we can take as we do this.

SLIDE2:

The University of Huddersfield is a fine academic institution in the United Kingdom. You have probably never heard of it but Huddersfield is a small town with 120,000 population, just in between Leeds and Manchester. We have a very strong reputation at Huddersfield for two main things: one is for music graduates and the other is for transport and logistics graduates. I am coming at this with a transport and logistics management background. You may think it a bit strange to be talking of transport and logistic graduates but when we look at the issues, the issue of graduates and graduate development is a key one in terms of fleet safety. I will come back to that in a roundabout way in a moment.

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR IS Thursday 8 February 2001

SLIDE 3:

At Huddersfield we have done a whole host of work in this area. It started in 1991 when one of our undergraduate students did a thesis on a case study of a home delivery retailer. The whole process snowballed from there. From that we got into looking at insurance claims dat!l. We identified what some of the key issues were. Manoeuvring was a big issue. That lead us to focus on manoeuvring vehicles.

There is a big issue in United Kingdom terms of moving towards the use of more flexible labour-a kind of de-unionisation, taking away workers', including drivers', rights, if you like and getting rid of their safe contract systems. That means a lot of driving tasks in the United Kingdom are being contracted out and have also been kind of marginalised through temporary driver agencies so that companies tend to have fewer drivers on their staff. Because of that issue there is a big problem in the United Kingdom of agency drivers and temporary drivers. In respect of that issue we did some benchmarking as well. I know the guys from Lumleys have done some benchmarking in Australia. From that benchmarking that then got us into looking at class recording systems and then, partly because of the problem of driver training and problems of traditional driver training, we also started to look at driver assessment and mechanisms to put in place driver assessments. That just gives you a feel for where the background to this paper is coming from.

I should also tell you about the people who give us money, because that just shows that if there are any kind of hidden agendas in this, at least you know that they are there and that they are funded by certain groups. In the United Kingdom we get a lot of money from industry, from the big companies. We get a lot of money from the Department of the Environment, Transport and Regions, which is obviously a national body and we also get

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR I6 Thursday 8 February 2001

....

quite a bit of European money. Huddersfield is quite a poor area so there is European funding to help poor areas become less poor, if that makes sense. That is the background to it all.

CARRS-Q-the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-is basically funded by the Motor Accidents Insurance Corporation, which is a CTP provider. CARRS-Q is a joint initiative of Motor Accidents Insurance Corporation and of the Queensland University of Technology. Basically we do research on all sorts of road safety issues and provide an education program. We also do as much facilitation, as we can. We do a lot of work on behaviour changes and rehabilitation programs, on drug use in the workplace, for example, and on drink driving programs. One of the things mentioned this morning was alcohol ignition interlocks. We are just about to start an interlock trial in Queensland, looking at repeat or recidivist drink driving offenders. That will give you a feel for what CARRS-Q does. I have come over here from the United Kingdom for 12 months to try to get more emphasis on work related and driving road safety.

SLIDE:

Why should we study this from a United Kingdom perspective? There are a whole host of reasons. The first is that we do not actually know how many work-related crashes there are. I know that later Ian Faulks is going to talk about purpose of journey data. In the United Kingdom we have exactly the same issue. Basically, we do not know how many crashes people are having when they are driving either a work vehicle or driving for work.

Large goods vehicles, which I guess you call heavy vehicles, make up about 1% of vehicles on the road in the United Kingdom and they make up about 6% of the kilometres but they have 15% of the fatal crashes. There is a bit of a problem there with larger vehicles. Small goods vehicles-which I guess you would call them vans-are involved in killing about 300 people a year. I will not say they kill. I do not know whether they kill or do not kill because the deaths happen but we do not have the data in the United Kingdom as to causation. We do

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR I7 Thursday 8 February 2001

not know whether it is the truck that has caused the crash or the other road user. We do not have that data in the United Kingdom.

If any of you wanted to you could go to London tomorrow and get a job driving a small goods vehicle and making 40 or 50 stops a day in London traffic. You do not need a tachograph on the vehicle. There are no driver hours regulations. Believe me, a lot of Australians do work as drivers when they go to London, so there is a bit of an issue there.

Company car drivers also think they are the best drivers, but they have the most violations in the United Kingdom. They are most likely to be speeding, to be involved in the use of alcohol, and to get parking tickets. There are probably a few issues there.

Company car drivers are something like 50% more likely to crash than private vehicles, even when you allow for exposure, the distance travelled and so on.

Somewhere between one in five and two in three company cars will be involved in a crash each year. I give you those numbers so widely because we do not really know the actual amount. I know that in Australia, from the. Lumley benchmarking data, that something like one in five company vehicles will have a crash each year.

Trucks in the United Kingdom-and there is a distinction here between long distance trucks that tend to have not very many crashes but they seem to be very big when they happen, or smaller courier-type vehicles that are doing 40 or 50 drops a day. They have more crashes but they do not cost so much and are quite often not fatal. There is a distinction between the heavier and light commercial vehicles.

In Australia you are quite ahead of us in respect of some of these things. We do not have any integration between occupational health and safety and transport regulations. The two do nqt really meet. At the moment a working party is trying to bring them together, but at the moment they do not really meet. A lot of crashes get lost somewhere between occupational health and safety types and the transport types and the two do not really match up very well.

I am not sure if the insurance issues are quite so big in Australia, because of compulsory third party insurance. In the United Kingdom insurance costs are going up very, very rapidly. There is this issue of ambulance chasing whereby solicitors are becoming highly promiscuous in terms of promoting their services around the personal injury claims issue. From a cost point of view, there are some big issues in the United Kingdom.

I guess that you have similar issues in Australia, but two landmark cases are probably the main reason why I am standing here now. In September 1993 a school bus was being driven by a schoolteacher who had been working all day. She drove to London and in the evening, after the play, she drove back, crashed on the motorway and killed 13 school pupils as well as herself. That landmark bus issue made people focus more on issues such as this. Six people got killed by a truck which was being driven by a temporary driver. That impacted a little on temporary work. All of the eight brakes on the vehicle failed.

I refer now to violations. One of the people employed by my centre has been investigating the incident to which I referred earlier and also other incidents. Those two things, which made this a difficult issue, have forced politicians in the United Kingdom to start focusing on them.


SLIDE:

There are also a host of issues relating to Australia. I will not refer to every issue because they are quite similar to the issues in the United Kingdom. I suggest that delegates should refer on the web site to the Monash University Accident Research Centre. They will find an accident report, which refers to almost all the issues to which I have referred today. If delegates want to go even further into why we should study this issue, I have just completed writing a paper entitled "Twenty Reasons to Study Work-related Road Safety in Australia". I would be happy to send that paper to anyone who wishes to send me an email. Delegates can see from the list a range of reasons why we should focus on these issues in Australia.

SLIDE:


What are the key issues? The key issues in the UK are: a lack of integration between health and safety and road safety. At the moment a task group is trying to integrate those two bodies. It is trying to bring together those two groups and it is trying to get work-related road safety into the health and safety arena and into some of the regulations. Clearly, Australia is ahead of the UK on that issue. At least you have the legislation in place to be able to do that; whereas we do not have legislation yet in the United Kingdom. Based on what I saw this morning our policy makers do very little in comparison to your government agencies. The approaches that came out of the road safety forum this morning are way ahead of anything that is available in the United Kingdom.

It is good to be able to talk shop as a lot of good material comes out of it which, from your point of view, is good. We could definitely learn from that. Everything in the United Kingdom tends to be insurance and claims driven and it is based on the concept that people should not admit liability. On the one hand we are trying to obtain better crash data and, on the other hand, we are telling our drivers not to admit liability. On the one hand we want drivers to report the crashes but, on the other hand, we do not want them to be honest about reporting the crashes. So there is a big dilemma because of that culture. We are trying to move that claims-led type system towards a more risk management-led system.

That is not as easy as it sounds. I would struggle to implement that. But it is a big issue that we have to focus on. In the United Kingdom there are lots of good examples of people who have done things pretty well. The main problem is that there are no standards. There are not any real key indicators. Benchmarking in the United Kingdom is nowhere near as advanced as benchmarking in Australia. It is not perfect in Australia, but it is a lot better than the system we have in the United Kingdom. We do not do that much evaluation. We do not have thl).t much in the way of crash databases. Once again, individual companies have their own systems. So it is impossible to compare the different systems. If you asked fifty police in a room to define what was meant by a "near hit", an "incident" or an "accident" they would all give you different definitions. So to try to compare or benchmark the crash rates in different organisations is sometimes very difficult because they all have different definitions and standards.

Quite often, a company with a high crash rate is actually much better than a company with a low crash rate. The company with the high crash rate often counts them all. We see that in several different cases. The companies that have really good practices actually have a much higher crash rate than companies that do not have such good practices. I refer now to the relationship between crashes, maintenance and resale values. What is the cut-off, for example, between wear and tear and a crash? You might be reducing the number of crashes by not counting as many crashes. But at the end of a vehicle's life the resale value of the vehicle will not be as high. So there are a host of issues around whether a crash goes through as a crash, or whether it goes through as something else. There are many issues to be resolved.

The management issue is interesting. Sometimes we have a transport manager, a fleet manager, a human resources manager or a health and safety manager. It is difficult to get all those people together; to get them to understand one another; to get them to speak the same language; and to get them to deal with one another. So there are some issues in the management area. I am not sure how strong this is in Australia, but in the UK there are quite


big differences between companies that are self-insured, companies that go through an insurer in America, and management companies. There are many issues for us to resolve in the United Kingdom. One of the biggest issues in the United Kingdom-and this has become a personal crusade--is the focus on drivers and vehicles rather than on managers.

SLIDE:

I will not go extensively through this list, but they will give delegates my views on why we should focus on managers rather than drivers, per se. We should focus on drivers, but we should focus much more on management issues. If delegates should do that test they will find that managers come out as ten and drivers come out as only one or two. This is very much a management issue. The focus tends to be on training the drivers, but what we really need to do involves management competence. We must look at management systems.

SLIDE:

WORKPLACE DRIVING SAFETY SEMINAR 2I Thursday 8 February 2001

I give Australia a pat on the back. It is well ahead of the United Kingdom. All the things that are listed on the overheads are examples of good practice in Australia. That puts Australia ahead of the UK. However, I will suggest a few key areas.

SLIDE:

I believe that there are several issues that are facing Australia and I base that view on the fact that I have been in Australia for six months. There are lots of programs and manuals, but how can they be turned into action and implementation?

There are issues involving leaders setting examples. There are political issues.

There are issues involving politicians' vehicles and government vehicles. So that is a starting point. Those are the people who should be leading the process in many ways.

There are issues involving evaluation. How do you evaluate these programs? What are the mechanisms? From a United Kingdom perspective we tend to look at three things: cost issues, because that is what gets people interested in the first place; crash statistics; and softer issues-issues such as what drivers talked about during the day, and so on. We are trying to get a flavour in all those three areas.

It is not an easy process. I focus on another issue in the United Kingdom-the management issue. What is the way forward? I am passionately of the view that the starting point is in better crash reporting and recording. Initially, we have to set in place policies that determine what we want to record and how we want to record it. Then we have to develop standards. You can determine that through crash rates, costs and softer issues. We should also focus

WORKPLACE DRIVrNG SAFETY SEMrNAR 22 Thursday 8 February 2001

,. ...

more on underlying causes. Most of the crash data available in the United Kingdom tends to focus on the crash type. But we do not do much in the area of investigation. We do not have an investigation process. That is an important area that we should examine in Australia.

We need to report on more cases and models of success, in particular, those that are non-PR based. They must be as objective and as rational as possible. We must also focus on how we manage change and how we implement programs. Once we have the money and the policies, we must determine how we do the nitty-gritty, day-to-day implementation and changes. One good mechanism is to begin at the starting point. I mentioned earlier several different starting points. There are some brilliant systems in place in the United Kingdom. If anyone wants to look at class reporting systems, in the United Kingdom we have just completed a big project on that issue. Anyone wanting to look at an early version of a class reporting self-audit should send me an email. They will find my email address on the back of the last page on the handout. I will happily email a copy of that handout.

In the United Kingdom we have done a lot of work on reversing vehicles safely. That is a specific issue. Delegates should visit also the web site www.hud.ac.uk and access the Transport Logistics Research Unit. They will find at the website a free copy of the reversing safety self-audit, which will give good guidelines and instructions. I am not talking about blanket advertising campaigns. However, we must focus on relevant issues. We must focus on the reasons that these things occur. The Monash University Accident Research Centre report on this issue gives us a reason why we should focus on these issues.

Earlier, I gave a lot of publicity to industry in Huddersfield. Although I was selling Huddersfield, I had sound reasons for doing so. The issues we must focus on are: management development, driver development and future managers. I do not know how many managers have gone through higher education, but it would be interesting to establish what proportion of MBA programs focus on the health and safety issue; and what proportion of transport degrees in Australia focus on this area. We are churning out the managers of the future. We must focus on this area. A lot of the best cases that are developed have come out of Huddersfield graduates who have gone into companies and have applied this methodology in relevant organisations.

There is a big argument for making interventions much more needs based. One way to do that is to try to develop an assessment-led process, rather than a training-led process. There is also a good argument for making some kind of interventions matrix-to look at potential interventions, their advantages and disadvantages, circumstances in which they have been used, and how they have been implemented. Clearly, all things will not work in every individual case, but if you have that matrix of things that you can potentially do at, at least you might start to think, "Maybe this will work in my environment." I do not think there is any easy solution. A year or two ago we looked at it and thought there were a lot of things we could do, and that this was an obvious area to target, which it is. But I do not think it is as easy as people who were really enthusiastic about it a year or two ago actually think it is.

I really found it hard to try to find a framework in which to fit all of this. I could not find one, so I thought I would give you something really cheesy to take away with you. It is the proactive approach. The key word for complete safety, in my opinion, is to be proactive as these things do not fit perfectly. I will not go through them all individually, but if you could take away one key word for complete safety I think it is the need to be proactive. Do not wait until someone gets killed by a fleet vehicle before you do anything about it. Sooner or later, it


. .. ·~

.. ·.. . ... ·.

is bound to happen, but if you can be more proactive beforehand, that is much better than waiting for a fatality or major injury to occur before you take action. Thank you.


@·~ ~ ~~ It. llUDDERSFJELD University of '·· ........

What are the key issues in work related road safety and

risk management?

Dr Will Murray ([email protected])

Visiting Research Fellow, CARRS-Q, Australia

Head of TLRU, Huddersfield, UK fsfpap, 3 February 2001

1

• ' - -·

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Learning outcomes

At the end of this session you will: I

• Know about Huddersfield and CARRS-Q

• See the need to focus on this in UK/ A us

• Understand the key issues in UK/Aus

• Identify opportunities and ways forward

2 '•

@·~ \ ..... ·· ~ ~~

• ~ HUDDERSFJELD University of

Huddersfield and CARRS-Q

Huddersfield

• 600+ transport &logistics graduates since 1988

• Fleet safety management research since 1991 *

Hudders{ield Leeds

CARRS-Q

• Joint initiative of MAIC & QUT in 1996

• Research, education

and facilitation of

safety improvements

for Queensland roads

London 1 and workplaces

3

• ..

@~ ·· ......... ~ /I/. I 11

University of D .. M;.\;\(1 1-lUDDERSFlEL

~~

CRS at Huddersfield • 1991 - McCorry honours thesis • 1993- IJPDLM & LF papers

• 1994 - Cases eg camels, home deliveries & retailer

• 1995 - Conference and LIM CCSM paper

• 1996 - Benchmarking, Parr paper • 1997 - CCSM conference & manager development • 1998- Reverse, assessment, culture and crash count

• 1999- Temps • 2000 - DAMP & Co VIR = crash counting • 2001 -Work related road safety in Australia/Qld

4

··""·. • kW(tl I ~~ i \ "/ University of

@!).( 1 . · · HUDDERSFTELD \ .... ··

Why study work related road safety and

risk management?

5

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University of 1-IUDDERSFlELD

Why study work related crashes?

• UK = no. of work related crashes unknown, but: - LGV=1% of vehicles (6%km) 15% of fatal; causes unknown!

SGVs = 300 dead! No hours, tacho or licence regulations

Company car drivers are 50% more likely to crash

25% (800-1k) of all road fatalities work-related

- 40kk of work related driving = risky as coal mining or construction 77,000 road-related injuries/year to employees

1/5 to 2/3 company cars crash each year

- Trucks = approximately 1 crash or claim/year in UK

National under reporting: many work related crashes 'lost' between police, insurers, companies, DETR, HSE and councils

Insurance costs, ambulance chasing & personal injury costs growing

Landmark bus and truck m11ltiple death crashes in 1993 6

@·~. \ .......

~ /1/.111 ~~ .. .M.\JW University of

HUDDERSFlELD

Why study work related crashes? • Australia very similar to UK:

- Most Australians very car, ute or 4WD dependent for work - Business travel - 33% of travel (50%+ if commuting included)

Fleet= 1/3 Australian vehicles & 50-60% of all new vehicles, 3* distance - WRCs increased from 39-49% of work fatalities! - 10-50% of fleet vehicles crash pa- c.$2000 each= 500000 crashes pa =

$1billion. If ROS = 10% need to generate $10 billion to pay for crashes - Indirect costs of fleet crashes 4-20* average repair bill

Workplace injury $s = 40% employee, 30% employer & 30% community - Employers control fleets - so actions can be taken and monitored

OHS regulations, duty of care and quality - Australian WRC statistics not good and very dated

• Little purpose of journey data - Qld exception = 1 in 5/6?

7

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00

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University of l-IUDUERSFTELD

Key issues in UK • Taskforce- work driving not part of workplace! • Policy makers do little to help vehicle operators improve • Insurance/claims/do not admit liability rather than risk-led • Good cases but few standards, KPis, benchmarks or evaluation

Coded fleet crash database- vehicle, driver, crash - What is a crash, accident, incident, wear & tear, near hit? - Under- and incomplete-reporting- incentive schemes

Relationship between crash, maintenance and resale $s - Fragmented management

- Variances in reporting, recording and systems/standards - Differences between self insured, broker and AMC

• Focus on driving and vehicles rather than management*

9

@'~ \ .......

iii~((@ ~~ University of

HUDDERSFlELD

Causes - bad DianageDient! • Who recruits the driver /writes their job specification? Driver/manager

• Who implements the change management processes?

• Who sets the schedule?

• Who tells the driver what to do? i

• Who gives last instructions to drivers when they go off-site?

• Who sets the manager's bonus scheme? '·

• Who is responsible for assessing/training the driver?

• Who sets and supervises the reversing policy?

• Who sets the policy for health, eyesight and drugs/alcohol?

• Who collects and analyses the crash data?

• Who undertakes risk assessments at frequently visited sites?

• Who manages the safety and risk management work group? I

Total: driver/maq~ger

...... ~ I I 1.1 I I ~~

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Australia probably ahead of UK? • FORS manual

• Staysafe36

• OH&S regulations

• Fleet Safety Forum

• TruckSafe/FleetSafe/QT audit/Lumley, AFMA, Q'Fleet CAS

• Monash report/policy

• Beyond the Midnight Oil

• But -do not get complacent! 11

.·····~ (_ ·~~-\ ···~··-'

... ··.·.

·~

·~

@~ ...........

.;((&! ~~ University of

l-lUDDERSFlELD

Key issues in Australia

• Turning programmes/manuals into actions

• Leaders not 'vision zeroing' eg Crossin, state's, researchers*

• In-depth detailed non-PR based best practice case studies

• What is a realistic mechanism to evaluate programmes which satisfies the need of both industry and academics? - opinion, anecdote, gut feel, commercial confidence/competitive advantage?

• Claims and maintenance data/insurance industry

• Problems with driver development programmes

• What interventions work and in what context?

• Management zeal to implement/change manage a programme?

13

@~. \ ..... ··

fww ~~ University af j' HUDDERSFlELD

Can we preach?? • Who makes their life/work style non-car-dependent?

• Who's a good driver?

• Who's read the road-rules recently?

• Who's taken a post test driver assessment?

• Who uses drugs/alcohol and drives?

• Who wears glasses?

• Who's an unconvicted speed criminal?

• Who uses hire cars?

• Who paid extra for safety features in their own car?

• Who manages their staff's habits on the above?

• Is our own house in order?? 14 '·

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@·~ \ ....... W. ~~ iii ;\ HUDDERSFIELD

University of

Way ahead? • Crash reporting and recording

- KPis (rates, $s, qualitative) - for effective and realistic evaluation

- Purpose of journey

- Focus on underlying causes

• Cases and models of success

• Identify change management & implementation processes

• Self audits - reverse*, crash reporting*, QT*

• Selling/keep focussing on (reasons to study)

• Management, driver and graduate development

• Data/assessment-led needs-based interventions matrix

• No easy wins -but PROACTIVE is a key word! 16

@·~. ...........

(iW ~~ iii ~ HUDDERSFlELD University of •

PROACTVE • Policy - do it rather than just have it

• Risk assessments

• Occupational health and safety integration

• Assessment of managers, supervisors and drivers

• Crash analysis and investigation

• Training of managers, supervisors and drivers

• Interventions matrix and testing

• Very enthusiastic management champion

• Evaluation 17

@~ ·· ..... .... W

I I

0

University of ;(W HUDDERSFlELD

~~ •

Contact

• Dr Will Murray - Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety

- Queensland University of Technology

- Email: [email protected]

- Web: www.arts.qut.edu.au/carrs/

- Tel: (07) 3864 4589, Fax: (07) 3864 4688

• Huddersfield - [email protected], www.hud.ac.uk

18

Documents

WORK-RELATED ROAD SAFETY - Parliament of NSW · work-related road safety to be held this afternoon. These partnerships have involved the STA YSAFE Committee, the Australian Transport