BACK TRACKS

WE NEED SAFER TRUCKS

With all the attention focussed on public health orders, Covid dangers and lockdowns around the nation, it struck us here at TTA that perhaps some focus had come off the matter of truck safety on our roads, and in particular, the safety of truck drivers on our roads.

We live in an environment of falling road fatalities, which has been a trend we have seen over the last 50 or so years, that’s seen the road toll plummet from a high of 3789 in 1970 to a national total of 1093 in 2020. That is a 71 per cent reduction, but that is deceptive, because of course population numbers have climbed in the other direction.

In 1970 the fatality rate equated to 30.4 deaths per 100,000 people with a national population of 12.5 million. In 2020 that fatality rate dropped to just 4.4 per 100,000 people against a population of 25 million. That means that while population has pretty much doubled the number of fatalities overall have dropped 71 per cent and the fatalities per head of population have dropped around 85 per cent.

In Australia’s most populous state, NSW, the overall complexion of road safety and fatalities is even better. In 2020 there were 196 deaths on NSW roads, the lowest road toll in 97 years . With a population of 7.4 million people in NSW that means the state had a death rate per 100,000 of 3.64. By comparison in 1923 there were 231 road deaths from a population of 2.3 million people in NSW, a fatality rate of 10 deaths per 100,000. Worse still, 1978 saw a state toll of 1378 people on the roads when the state population was around four million. That meant that the fatality rate was 34.5 per 100,000.

We have certainly come a long way, there is no doubt about that. The improvements have come, as we surely all know, from a reduction of drink driving, better roads and above all better vehicles.

So against that background of plummeting road deaths and more importantly injuries, it came as a bit of a shock to see that the number of fatalities for heavy truck drivers are up in an environment of dramatic falls in road deaths and trauma.

That is a worry and we believe it points partly to the ageing truck fleet and the need to bring newer, safer trucks to our roads.

Of course the latest trucks are chock full of safety equipment and technology, that helps drivers stay out of crash situations, and in many instances also ameliorates or drastically reduces the impact of collisions if they can’t be avoided.

Innovations like autonomous emergency braking, which we have witnessed the benefits of in controlled tests and demos, lane keep assist, driver attention monitoring and of course electronic stability control are things that are spreading across all new trucks. Problem is, all of those old trucks that don’t have any of that tech are the problem.

There has been plenty of talk about the need for government incentives for the take up of zero emission vehicles but equally important is the need to reduce the number of old trucks and to increase the safety of the national fleet by driving the desire to buy newer trucks.

The benefits would be felt right the way across our society, for truck operators, car users, economically, socially and emotionally. All we can say is it’s about time we updated the fleet and we need to do it sooner rather than later.

In this issue we have a full rundown of Volvo’s completely updated range of trucks with road tests of the flagship FH16 Globetrotter on a run from Karratha to Broome as well as a test of the new FH 13 with Turbo Compounding and the ‘logistics’ special FM460.

Electric vehicles seem to be on everyone’s minds at the moment and we have a full test of Fuso’s first production eCanter electric light duty truck as well as a test of the Nissan Leaf e+ in our Company Car section.

We take a look at an innovative waste collection company in Melbourne which has found a solution to the issue of collecting rubbish from the tight confines of new mega apartment complexes that are pervading our cities these days.

In other profiles we look at a fleet which has embraced MAN as the perfect truck for its logistics operations in Sydney as well as visiting an innovative South Australian food delivery company using Isuzus.

All that and a whole lot more in this issue of Transport & Trucking, so hope you enjoy the read and please stay safe.

JON THOMSON

PUNCH ABOVE YOUR WEIGHT

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