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S pecialists have been warning for years that sleepy drivers do
Page 35
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far more damage on Britain's roads than drunk drivers. Now, largely thanks to the prosecution of Gary Hart—the man jailed for nodding off at the wheel and causing to deaths in the Selby rail crash— more and more people are starting to take them seriously.
In the road haulage industry, the risks of tired drivers taking to the road in HGVs are finally beginning to attract the attention they should. So too are the rather more complex issues surrounding liability, costs and responsibility to other road users.
The latest case to highlight the risks .nvolved a truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel on the M zo and killed a young engaged :ouple. Paul Couldridge from Gravesend, Kent. was convicted at Maidstone Crown Zourt on two charges of dangerous driving.
Bleep apnoea
Fhe court heard how Couldridge had admit:ed nodding off at the wheel 15 times before )ut continued driving despite suffering from deep apnoea—a snoring-related condition in which the sufferer momentarily wakes lozens of times in the night and is left drowsy ma tired during the day.
On zo September z000 he was on the _landon-bound carriageway of the Mao in Cent when he struck a broken-down van on he hard shoulder. His truck veered across hree lanes and hit an oncoming BMW carryng the two ill-Fated passengers.
Sentencing him to eight years in jail Judge )avid Mitchell said: "The fact is you knew you ihould not be driving and that it was dangeryus. Sooner or later, it was a certainty, given hat history, that there would be an accident of 'cry serious consequences."
In the past, hauliers may have seen this as a luestion of driver responsibility, or rather irreponsibility. But the application of the corpoate manslaughter law appears to be changing he way haulage companies view their culpaAlit}, for accidents involving employees.
Now, if a driver has an accident that can be lirectly attributed to excessive workload, inreasonable working practices or pressure rom senior management, then his bosses nay well end up in the dock beside him.
Larger companies are beginning to acknowledge the potential financial benefits in areas, such as reduced insurance premiums, if they take steps to reduce their accident risks.
This in turn has Fuelled demand within the industry for the services ofcompanies specialising in improving driver safety and reducing the risk of accidents.
The services offered vary widely, from conventional tuition on driving skills and awareness to tackling driver fatigue by reviewing the whole transport management structure.
Awake, an offshoot of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, was set up early last year to focus on fatigue-related accidents and their prevention.
A team of assessors scrutinises every aspect of a haulier's working practices, from auditing accident data to analysing the shift patterns using computer models. This allows them to build up a picture of the effects of shift-working on drivers' daytime alertness and the risk of them having an accident. On the back of this the company compiles a report outlining the danger areas and recommending steps to reduce the risks.
"There's a huge amount of interest from the haulage industry," says company spokesman, psychologist Dr Paul Jackson. "Some of these companies are huge and may have hundreds of drivers. Obviously, the issue for them is cost because accidents can cost them millions of pounds. We recently worked with a large coach operator and as a result of our recommendations they reduced their accident rate by 38% in one year."
Flintshire-based Minding Driving takes a slightly different approach by focusing on the behavioural aspects of driving. Using assessment techniques based on psychological profiling, it claims to be able to pinpoint possible faults in drivers' personalities that could lead to problems once they are out on the road.
Former police officer George Smith who established the company says these techniques are sometimes used as part of the recruitment process.
"These techniques do work," he stresses. "If you ask quite a simple question like `do you get aggressive when driving?' then they will say no. But if you say 'you're running late and under pressure; do you try and push other drivers to go faster?' they may say yes. By asking the question that way, you can see the driver could be aggressive and it's a very sure way of finding out if you're getting the right person.
"Quite a few large companies are now looking at the behavioural side of driving," he adds. "At one time they only looked at technical skills." Smith reports that a major logistics firm which had been threatened with a steep hike in its insurance costs was able to negotiate a cut in premiums after implementing his recommendations.
Drivers' behaviour and thought processes are also the target for Derbyshire-based Peak Performance, a risk management company that claims to score success through changing drivers' understanding of how accidents happen.
Driver behaviour
"We're out to influence drivers' behaviour and their thinking process, as opposed to the way they change gear," insists head of sales John Howard. "We try to make them more risk aware."
Howard says years of studying accident reports shows the phrase 'all of -a sudden...' is one of the most over-used expressions by drivers involved in crashes. "We even have a workshop called 'All of a Sudden' because nothing ever happens all of a sudden," he says. "There's always a sequence of events building up to it."
Some hauliers will call in such companies purely to make their drivers safer and reduce the risks to other road users. Many, however, will want to see a financial return on taking drivers off the job and spending money on training—whether it's in the form of lower insurance charges or more efficient working.
John Miller, operations director at Axtra, a general haulier based in Shoreham, West Sussex, says two years ago Axtra introduced a bonus scheme for drivers who reduced their accident rate. "It has eliminated all the sloppy mistakes," says Miller.