This post is for my non trucker friends. This post is not meant as an exhaustive and detailed account of exactly how our supply chain works but it is a view from the front line, a view probably a little different than what you hear from experts and academics. It's an opinion formed from my daily experience over the past 21 years, for what it is worth.
We have to realise that for many years now we have been integrating our supply chain with our neighbours to the south and increasingly with our neighbours across the globe. But those are words that mean little to most of us. That's because right now we are in a situation that sees us recognise that we have to maintain trade & commerce to get the medical supplies, food, and everyday products we all need to those that need it most. But it's not just about the finished products like respirators for those that have fallen ill and the personal protective equipment (PPE) for the health care workers caring for those that have fallen ill. We have to also keep all the products moving that make up those finished products. Let me give you an example.
A few weeks ago I picked up 42,000 pounds of a single ingredient in Minnesota that is used to supplement poultry feed. This single product, if we look at it as it crosses the border, is not important in comparison to the respirator or the PPE we need right now. But our poultry producers here in southern Ontario can't produce the chicken & turkey products you'll be wanting 3 months from now without that ingredient that is crossing the border today. Can that product go to the back of the line in terms of getting across the border today or tomorrow? Yes it can. Can we stop importing or exporting that product until the pandemic is over? No.
It's important for everyone not to think of only the finished products that are sitting in the warehouses ready for shipment but to think of all of the ingredients that make up those products and keep up the steady flow of products into our homes and businesses that we consume everyday and depend on for our incomes and all of the jobs in turn that depend on that income. We are interdependent. We cannot forget that. You may be physically isolated right now to protect yourself and your neighbours but you remain fully connected to your neighbours and your community despite that isolation. So it's just as important to keep all the raw materials and parts flowing that are part of that respirator or surgical mask or make up the meal you want to feed your family tonight. It's also important to keep all those other things moving that you may not think are important but your livelihoods depend on even though you may not realise it. You may be off work now but you need everything in place when you return to public life in order to pick up where you left off and you need to depend on the supply chain to keep you sheltered and fed in the meantime.
Please don't practice excessive hoarding. Your simply stressing the supply chain and confusing a system that is strong and robust in its own right. Think of your neighbours. Please conduct yourself from a place of compassion for others and not fear for yourself. We can all care for one another through this and adapt as we move forward, but if we just shut everything down or panic and think of ourselves only then the system starts to collapse.
As I said at the outset of this post, I am not an expert. I'm just a regular guy doing my thing just like the rest of you. I have a window that gives me a view of the front line and wanted to share. It's worth stepping back and thinking before acting. Don't make a crisis worse by overreacting. Please.
Friday 20 March 2020
Thursday 19 March 2020
Trucking & Covid 19: Sanitize
This is an important
topic for me since my wife has a mildly compromised respiratory system and
falls into a high risk category when it comes to covid 19. We have an ongoing
discussion about the situation we're presently in, reviewing it together on a weekly
basis. There is a delicate balance between risk to myself, risk to my wife,
obligation to my employer, and remaining conscious of the importance of keeping
the supply chain we all live with operating normally.
It is far better to act out of compassion for others and not fear for yourself. That is, doing everything you can to prevent the spread of this virus to others is a far better way of protecting yourself than acting out of fear of its affect on you.
There are numerous
points of personal contact in the trucking & delivery sector. In a highway
tractor it's much easier to isolate oneself for an extended period than say a
day cab driver doing pickup & delivery all day then returning to the home terminal
every night. So the approach to maintaining social distance and a sanitized
workspace is very dependent on the specific circumstance. But here's what I did
last week on a typical trip.
First, understand my
circumstance. We have only employee drivers where I work. There are no owner
operators or independent contractors. This means the tractor assigned to me may
be used over the course of the two days I am home each week. It may be used for
local delivery or a short run into Michigan, which may or may not include a
driver having to use the sleeper berth. There may also be warehouse & wash
bay staff as well as diesel technicians in and out of the truck over the course
of those two days.
So upon arrival at
the yard I use Lysol spray to disinfect every touch surface from the driver's
door and move methodically through the truck hitting every surface. There are a
lot. From controls on the sides of the driver's seat to every handle, latch, lever,
button, switch, control knob, seat, carpet, mattress(s), (all sides) work
surfaces, and touchscreen surfaces. The whole inside of the frigging
truck. I do this wearing nitrile gloves.
Then I go in the office and grab my paperwork allowing the sanitizer to
sanitize for a while.
Still with gloves on
and before putting any of my personal gear into the cab I wipe down any wet
sanitizer left on hard surfaces. Then I do my usual wipe down of the truck with
Armour All/window cleaner and vacuum. Then I load up my gear after throwing out
all the paper towels etc. from the clean-up.
Here is a piece from
livescience.com about what is known thus far about how long the virus lives on surfaces and how to treat it.
For highway drivers
like myself things get a lot easier from here on out. With the workplace
sterile you have control over what comes in from that point on.
Luckily for me the
pick ups I do in Michigan are drop and hook at our customers facilities and I
have little to no contact at all with personnel on site. But what about
documents that have been handled by others? I don't have an answer on this. I
then head straight to our Winnipeg terminal. I have food & water in the
truck so can sleep in rest areas, as long as they are kept open, and because
our loads are light out of Michigan I have no need to fuel until I reach
Winnipeg. I have the ability to limit my exposure at service plazas & truck stops so I will continue to do this.
My only close
human contact would be at ports of entry and exit into and out of the U.S. and
at the security gate of our customer. It is quite easy to maintain the required
social distance and isolation to a high degree as a highway driver. A regular wipe down
of driver door handle, grab handles, and steering wheel with a spray cleaner
along with all the hand washing, hand sanitizing, and use of nitrile gloves keeps my workspace sterile. I think.
With a driver that
has to do deliveries all day long it becomes much more complicated. Nitrile
gloves, no face touching, social distancing, frequent hand washing/sanitizing,
and a pre-trip and post-trip spray down of the cab are all that you can do.
What about face
masks? I keep a few in the truck in case I become symptomatic so have some
protection for others by not spreading the infection. From the limited research
I've done apparently filter masks do little to protect you against getting the virus - other than preventing you
from touching your own mouth - but they are beneficial in restricting the
spread from you since the virus is attached to water droplets you cough/breath
out.
That's all on that
for now.
Monday 9 March 2020
Sunday Podcasts
Sundays unfold in a similar way for me each week. It's as close as I get to anything I can call predictable in the course of my work. One thing I do every week, whether I'm travelling to Winnipeg via northern Ontario or through the U.S. Midwest, is stream CBC's The Sunday Edition podcast.
It's not that I always love the content, or the opinions expressed. I enjoy the format. It is always a deep dive and rarely superficial. It is food for thought. It is also whimsy. Perhaps a radio documentary on fountain pens or an anniversary celebration of "The Paper Bag Princess" by Robert Munsch may be on the show. I may also discover new people, like Ben Cowie of London Bicycle Café in my hometown of London, Ontario. This was an introduction through the podcast that opened the door for me to many different perspectives on urban planning, climate, civic responsibility, transportation, road safety, and Vision Zero, to name a few. It is a podcast that rarely disappoints with its varying view of the world.
The universe always unfolds in a systematic way. On Sunday morning I finished off a twitter conversation that had started the night previous about the selection of Steven Del Duca as leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. He leaves me uninspired as a leader. I am open to being wowed by his performance but at present he doesn't seem to have the chops to carry us forward and lead us into a future in which my grandchildren will be able to thrive, or at the very least survive.
So I started my driving day, slipping on my headphones in preparation for a few hours of easy Sunday listening with thoughts of what the future may hold echoing in my mind.
So I listened to The Social and Environmental Costs of Mining for Green Energy. I thought about how the future really isn't about transitioning away from cars fueled by fossil fuel to cars powered by electric, it is about transitioning away from cars. Period. The future is really about a dramatic change in the way we move through and live in this world. An electric car, it's supporting infrastructure (continuous expansion of roads/parking) and consequential carbon footprint isn't a solution or a real change. Listen through the link above. Think about it.
Then there was Alberta's Growing Oil Well Problem. This is a deep dive into the financial reality of the problems faced by the citizens of not just Alberta but the world at large. We all need to take the time to listen to the people on the ground. This is not a partisan piece of reporting at all. I found it objective and informative. Listen to it and think about it. Our children depend on us making rational decisions on their behalf. This piece is a must listen. Listen through the link above. Think about it.
Then this. A Study in Contrasts. The weekly essay is a segment in which regular folks like you and I have the ability to submit a personal essay on pretty much any topic. It's about our shared humanity and the issues we all face. In this case an elderly couple that have lived a life of activism and face the prospect late in their life that nothing they have done has had an impact. The future their grandchildren face remains bleak and that is a source of great anxiety. It was a moving essay, especially when looked at in context of the other two pieces in the podcast that I linked to. I feel these emotions. There is a growing anxiety in me in terms of what my grandchildren will have to live with and deal with as a result of how we have lived our lives. I have been loathe to own up to this. I have not yet come to terms with it. Listen through the link above. Think about it.
Trucking for a living has its hazards. One of them is the time I have to think as my days stretch out across the countless miles. As my weekly pleasure in the Sunday Edition podcast wrapped up my mind fell into the abyss of thought that frequently dwells on my grandchildren and the future they face. We need leaders that are not afraid to make decisions for future generations rather than in our short term interest. We need to act now. We need to get off fossil fuels quickly, not by 2050, but now. We need to remake our society in a way that is not dependent on cars of any type no matter how they are powered. We need to do that now. This is not comfortable. It is necessary. I don't like it either but it is our responsibility to our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond.
The three pieces I have linked to above open the door wide to the reality of the present moment and the potential paths we face into the future. We live in difficult times. We need to make hard choices. Those choices will not be in our immediate self interest but in a liveable future for all of us. We all need to ask ourselves, what will my legacy be? As we are constantly reminded by our young people, we need to act. We need to act now. We need to act for them not for us. We need to act in a responsible way. We need to act.
Friday 6 March 2020
Keeping Your Head in the Game
This post appeared in the November 2019 edition of Truck News.
You can make sure your phone is in airplane mode when you drive, never snack when you’re behind the wheel, always have both hands on the wheel, and yet still be a distracted driver. Keeping your head in the game is the greatest challenge professional drivers’ face when it comes to keeping ourselves and everyone around us safe from harm. It’s a delusion to believe that we can focus solely on the task of driving when behind the wheel or that the solution to this challenge is mandated rest.
I firmly believe that road safety starts with the right attitude in your head. For example you shouldn’t be driving if you’re filled with any destructive emotion such as anxiety, anger, or depression. The same applies if you are experiencing fatigue, burnout, or exhaustion. But is that even possible in the world that commercial drivers’ move in? How many of you reading this that drive professionally have made it through a week without experiencing at least one of the physical or emotional factors I alluded to and what do you do, if anything, about it?
I’m pretty sure that every dispatch office as well as every shipping & receiving office has experienced the angry, irate, or emotionally charged truck driver. Very often we drivers are a pressure cooker filled with nuggets of emotion stewing in a broth of fatigue. Woe betide the dispatcher or shipping clerk that pops open the lid without backing of the pressure first.
Having a fellow driver you can call and just shoot the breeze with when anxiety and fatigue start to take hold is important. I’m no psychologist but I know that talking to someone who shares your same experience and background in the industry is a fantastic way to change the channel in your head. Often that is all that you need to dissipate the anger or frustration you are feeling. It’s a simple way of releasing that pressure you’re experiencing. In the two decades that I’ve been trucking I have never sat in a safety meeting that has discussed the everyday emotional challenges that drivers, especially long-haul drivers, face with any great depth. The closest to this topic we ever seem to get is when employee benefits are discussed and Employee Assistance Programs are on the agenda.
But what about fatigue, weariness, exhaustion, and burnout? Well, to be honest, those are things we only talk about in terms of hours of service regulations and drivers know those rules are not a magic elixir to eliminate fatigue.
So in my opinion distracted driving results from the debilitating emotional and physical responses we experience as a result of the work we do. You get emotionally charged, or fatigued, or both, and your mind wonders off to deal with those issues. Your head is no longer in the game. You are now experiencing a much higher level of risk and you probably aren’t aware of it.
Eighty percent of ongoing driver training (if you get any training that is) should be learning about how to keep your head in the game and how to recognize the emotional and physical factors within yourself that put you at an increased level of risk. I think this is the most important step towards improving the dismal safety record within our industry.
I’m raising this topic because for the last several months I have been feeling a heightened level of anxiety and burnout. As a result I have become hypersensitive to requests from the folks in operations that place any additional demand on my time even if those requests are reasonable and not at all unusual, which is the majority of the time. I have a high degree of respect for the people I work with. I’ve worked with many of them for over 16 years now so the last thing I want to do is act like a jerk and be disrespectful or unreasonable.
How our mental wellbeing affects our personal safety and the safety of others on the job is a huge topic. I think workplace safety in the trucking industry deserves a driver’s point of view from the front lines. Hopefully I can bring you some of that perspective over the next several months with a break here and there for any hot topics that grab my attention. Be aware and be safe out there drivers.
You can make sure your phone is in airplane mode when you drive, never snack when you’re behind the wheel, always have both hands on the wheel, and yet still be a distracted driver. Keeping your head in the game is the greatest challenge professional drivers’ face when it comes to keeping ourselves and everyone around us safe from harm. It’s a delusion to believe that we can focus solely on the task of driving when behind the wheel or that the solution to this challenge is mandated rest.
I firmly believe that road safety starts with the right attitude in your head. For example you shouldn’t be driving if you’re filled with any destructive emotion such as anxiety, anger, or depression. The same applies if you are experiencing fatigue, burnout, or exhaustion. But is that even possible in the world that commercial drivers’ move in? How many of you reading this that drive professionally have made it through a week without experiencing at least one of the physical or emotional factors I alluded to and what do you do, if anything, about it?
I’m pretty sure that every dispatch office as well as every shipping & receiving office has experienced the angry, irate, or emotionally charged truck driver. Very often we drivers are a pressure cooker filled with nuggets of emotion stewing in a broth of fatigue. Woe betide the dispatcher or shipping clerk that pops open the lid without backing of the pressure first.
Having a fellow driver you can call and just shoot the breeze with when anxiety and fatigue start to take hold is important. I’m no psychologist but I know that talking to someone who shares your same experience and background in the industry is a fantastic way to change the channel in your head. Often that is all that you need to dissipate the anger or frustration you are feeling. It’s a simple way of releasing that pressure you’re experiencing. In the two decades that I’ve been trucking I have never sat in a safety meeting that has discussed the everyday emotional challenges that drivers, especially long-haul drivers, face with any great depth. The closest to this topic we ever seem to get is when employee benefits are discussed and Employee Assistance Programs are on the agenda.
But what about fatigue, weariness, exhaustion, and burnout? Well, to be honest, those are things we only talk about in terms of hours of service regulations and drivers know those rules are not a magic elixir to eliminate fatigue.
So in my opinion distracted driving results from the debilitating emotional and physical responses we experience as a result of the work we do. You get emotionally charged, or fatigued, or both, and your mind wonders off to deal with those issues. Your head is no longer in the game. You are now experiencing a much higher level of risk and you probably aren’t aware of it.
Eighty percent of ongoing driver training (if you get any training that is) should be learning about how to keep your head in the game and how to recognize the emotional and physical factors within yourself that put you at an increased level of risk. I think this is the most important step towards improving the dismal safety record within our industry.
I’m raising this topic because for the last several months I have been feeling a heightened level of anxiety and burnout. As a result I have become hypersensitive to requests from the folks in operations that place any additional demand on my time even if those requests are reasonable and not at all unusual, which is the majority of the time. I have a high degree of respect for the people I work with. I’ve worked with many of them for over 16 years now so the last thing I want to do is act like a jerk and be disrespectful or unreasonable.
How our mental wellbeing affects our personal safety and the safety of others on the job is a huge topic. I think workplace safety in the trucking industry deserves a driver’s point of view from the front lines. Hopefully I can bring you some of that perspective over the next several months with a break here and there for any hot topics that grab my attention. Be aware and be safe out there drivers.
Raising our Standards
This post appeared in the December 2019 edition of Truck News.
I was reading a letter to the editor in Today’s Trucking recently. The reader was expressing his disappointment in the quality of driving he was witnessing on the road around the greater Toronto area and the loss of life that he felt was becoming commonplace. The reader expressed what he felt the root of the problem was. “We switch from professional drivers to guys getting licences in a truck with an automatic transmission. They don’t understand, when hauling more than 50,000 lb. that this isn’t like a car.”
So my first reaction to this was, wait a minute, I’ve been driving an automatic for several years now. Recently, I was rolling down a long steep grade on Highway 17 through Superior Provincial Park. It was late evening when a young moose ran out in front of me. I was grossing 82,500 pounds and my engine brakes were already controlling my descent so all I had to do was brake and steer. That automatic transmission downshifted with the engine brakes fully engaged at a rate that I could never match with a standard transmission. The antilock braking system, the disc brakes, as well as the LED lighting all assisted in avoiding a collision. I didn’t even register a “hard brake”. So what’s not to like about these new automatics? Then I paused in my thoughts and reread the above quote from the reader. The difference is that I am a professional driver. I learned on a stick and drove one for many years. Is that the solution to the problem?
What the reader honed in on is the minimal amount of training and then mentoring that new drivers receive. Training new drivers on a standard transmission requires a greater investment in time. The result is not just a basic proficiency in a wider skill set but all of the related training that goes along with it. How a trainer/mentor shares his or her experience is incredibly important to the new driver. I fully understand and agree with the reader on this point. So it’s not the equipment we drive that is the problem it is the quality of training we receive. What the reader is really saying is that automatics equal a lack of adequate investment in time required to truly understand the physics involved in driving heavy equipment.
Way back in 1995 The Canadian Trucking Human Resource Council first launched an entry level program named Earning Your Wheels. It is an intensive program and nationally recognized. The program has been revised several times as the CTHRC worked with trucking schools, carriers, insurance, and other stakeholders in the trucking industry. So why do we accept this fallacy that technology has leveled the playing field when it comes to driving a truck. It simply is not true. The data from any reputable carrier will show that equipment, all spec’d the same, produces different results with different drivers. Training and mentorship matters. The problem isn’t drivers. The problem is money and the investment megacarriers have placed in technology over training. We need both. It’s long past time that we stop looking at drivers as an expense rather than an asset. Professional drivers amplify the return on investment that is made in technology when they receive not only the required entry level training but the ongoing training to keep up with technological changes that continue to grow exponentially.
I want to assure all readers that there is a percentage of professional truck drivers that care deeply about road safety and share in the feeling that our overall performance is in decline. But what do we do about it as individual drivers? Can we do anything about it? Safety professionals, enforcement agencies, governments, truck driving schools, carrier associations and insurance companies have left drivers hanging in the wind by not acting on programs they have participated in developing over a 25 year period and then leaving them on the shelf to gather dust in anonymity.
My solution fellow drivers is to reach into your pockets and cough up the $50 - $100 annually to join a professional organization for drivers such as the Women’s Trucking Federation of Canada, or OBAC, or OOIDA, or all three. Make it a 5 year commitment because we can’t change things overnight. We’ll never change anything by clicking “like” on a Facebook group. We need a collective voice to make a difference on our roads and within our industry. Drivers need their own lobby group. We’re professionals. We have a vast collective knowledge that is grossly underutilized. Let’s make sure everyone knows that.
I was reading a letter to the editor in Today’s Trucking recently. The reader was expressing his disappointment in the quality of driving he was witnessing on the road around the greater Toronto area and the loss of life that he felt was becoming commonplace. The reader expressed what he felt the root of the problem was. “We switch from professional drivers to guys getting licences in a truck with an automatic transmission. They don’t understand, when hauling more than 50,000 lb. that this isn’t like a car.”
So my first reaction to this was, wait a minute, I’ve been driving an automatic for several years now. Recently, I was rolling down a long steep grade on Highway 17 through Superior Provincial Park. It was late evening when a young moose ran out in front of me. I was grossing 82,500 pounds and my engine brakes were already controlling my descent so all I had to do was brake and steer. That automatic transmission downshifted with the engine brakes fully engaged at a rate that I could never match with a standard transmission. The antilock braking system, the disc brakes, as well as the LED lighting all assisted in avoiding a collision. I didn’t even register a “hard brake”. So what’s not to like about these new automatics? Then I paused in my thoughts and reread the above quote from the reader. The difference is that I am a professional driver. I learned on a stick and drove one for many years. Is that the solution to the problem?
What the reader honed in on is the minimal amount of training and then mentoring that new drivers receive. Training new drivers on a standard transmission requires a greater investment in time. The result is not just a basic proficiency in a wider skill set but all of the related training that goes along with it. How a trainer/mentor shares his or her experience is incredibly important to the new driver. I fully understand and agree with the reader on this point. So it’s not the equipment we drive that is the problem it is the quality of training we receive. What the reader is really saying is that automatics equal a lack of adequate investment in time required to truly understand the physics involved in driving heavy equipment.
Way back in 1995 The Canadian Trucking Human Resource Council first launched an entry level program named Earning Your Wheels. It is an intensive program and nationally recognized. The program has been revised several times as the CTHRC worked with trucking schools, carriers, insurance, and other stakeholders in the trucking industry. So why do we accept this fallacy that technology has leveled the playing field when it comes to driving a truck. It simply is not true. The data from any reputable carrier will show that equipment, all spec’d the same, produces different results with different drivers. Training and mentorship matters. The problem isn’t drivers. The problem is money and the investment megacarriers have placed in technology over training. We need both. It’s long past time that we stop looking at drivers as an expense rather than an asset. Professional drivers amplify the return on investment that is made in technology when they receive not only the required entry level training but the ongoing training to keep up with technological changes that continue to grow exponentially.
I want to assure all readers that there is a percentage of professional truck drivers that care deeply about road safety and share in the feeling that our overall performance is in decline. But what do we do about it as individual drivers? Can we do anything about it? Safety professionals, enforcement agencies, governments, truck driving schools, carrier associations and insurance companies have left drivers hanging in the wind by not acting on programs they have participated in developing over a 25 year period and then leaving them on the shelf to gather dust in anonymity.
My solution fellow drivers is to reach into your pockets and cough up the $50 - $100 annually to join a professional organization for drivers such as the Women’s Trucking Federation of Canada, or OBAC, or OOIDA, or all three. Make it a 5 year commitment because we can’t change things overnight. We’ll never change anything by clicking “like” on a Facebook group. We need a collective voice to make a difference on our roads and within our industry. Drivers need their own lobby group. We’re professionals. We have a vast collective knowledge that is grossly underutilized. Let’s make sure everyone knows that.
The Fatal Flaw with Roundabouts
This post was published in the January 2020 edition of Truck News
Several years ago I sat in a meeting that was presenting the safety advantages of using roundabouts. We talked about how they prevented T-bone collisions that occur at conventional intersections and that if a collision does occur it happens at a reduced speed and at a forty five degree angle dramatically reducing the risk of serious injury to vehicle occupants. All good stuff. At least that is how it looked on the surface.
Sometime after that I started taking an interest in Vision Zero, a system of addressing road safety in a very different way. Simply stated, “In every situation a person might fail. The road system should not.” – Vision Zero
So when you look at that traffic roundabout it is a failure because it doesn’t take into account pedestrians, cyclists, or anyone with any type of mobility issue. We place all of those people on the outside of the roundabout where the energy of all the vehicles is directed in terms of centrifugal force. Any loss of traction or steering control and it’s bye-bye pedestrian or cyclist. We also don’t consider that pedestrians may have to move in a clockwise direction as opposed to all the traffic that is moving in a counter clockwise direction. So pedestrians have to deal with vehicles moving in to the roundabout in which the driver is watching traffic approaching on their left but not paying any attention to the pedestrian on their right that may be trying to cross the slip lane in front of them. So there are many situations here in which a person might fail and in doing so cause injury to another or to themselves. It does not matter if that person is a driver, a pedestrian, or a cyclist. The roundabout design fails because it has only been designed to reduce risk of injury to vehicle operators and has not accounted for other users.
This concept of safety through design was hard for me to swallow at first. As a professional driver that takes a great deal of pride in my safety record and respect for other road users I didn’t want to own up to the fact that I could cause unintentional harm to others. If someone was harmed it would not be my fault. That in fact may be true, but fault is not the issue, prevention is. This is the backbone of the argument for developing and building separate infrastructure to support all modes of active mobility. Simply separate high speed motorized vehicles from all others. Problem solved.
For many years I have been advocating a defensive driving approach on the part of individual drivers in order to improve road safety and reduce harm to all road users. I felt by diligently practicing the Smith System of defensive driving and advocating its use I could have a net positive effect on road safety. This may still hold true on the open highway where modifying behaviour is the only real option to improving safety but within our cities design is by far the best way to prevent failure and insure safety of all road users.
What I am finding really disturbing of late is an attitude that is displayed by growing numbers of drivers. That attitude is ‘me first’. It puts all road users at risk. On the highway, where I spend most of my time, this attitude is reflected in speeding, following too closely, cell phone use, and all forms of aggressive driving that puts the individuals perceived right to get where they need to be as quickly as possible ahead of the safety of the whole community. On reflection, all of those things also happen on the roads in my own community. It is appalling.
As professional driver’s fellow truckers, we cannot give up. I remain a strong proponent of practicing kindness and patience every minute of my day behind the wheel. I am committed to protecting the most vulnerable on our roads like the pedestrians and cyclists using that roundabout that started this conversation. I hope that you will take up that same challenge.
Several years ago I sat in a meeting that was presenting the safety advantages of using roundabouts. We talked about how they prevented T-bone collisions that occur at conventional intersections and that if a collision does occur it happens at a reduced speed and at a forty five degree angle dramatically reducing the risk of serious injury to vehicle occupants. All good stuff. At least that is how it looked on the surface.
Sometime after that I started taking an interest in Vision Zero, a system of addressing road safety in a very different way. Simply stated, “In every situation a person might fail. The road system should not.” – Vision Zero
So when you look at that traffic roundabout it is a failure because it doesn’t take into account pedestrians, cyclists, or anyone with any type of mobility issue. We place all of those people on the outside of the roundabout where the energy of all the vehicles is directed in terms of centrifugal force. Any loss of traction or steering control and it’s bye-bye pedestrian or cyclist. We also don’t consider that pedestrians may have to move in a clockwise direction as opposed to all the traffic that is moving in a counter clockwise direction. So pedestrians have to deal with vehicles moving in to the roundabout in which the driver is watching traffic approaching on their left but not paying any attention to the pedestrian on their right that may be trying to cross the slip lane in front of them. So there are many situations here in which a person might fail and in doing so cause injury to another or to themselves. It does not matter if that person is a driver, a pedestrian, or a cyclist. The roundabout design fails because it has only been designed to reduce risk of injury to vehicle operators and has not accounted for other users.
This concept of safety through design was hard for me to swallow at first. As a professional driver that takes a great deal of pride in my safety record and respect for other road users I didn’t want to own up to the fact that I could cause unintentional harm to others. If someone was harmed it would not be my fault. That in fact may be true, but fault is not the issue, prevention is. This is the backbone of the argument for developing and building separate infrastructure to support all modes of active mobility. Simply separate high speed motorized vehicles from all others. Problem solved.
For many years I have been advocating a defensive driving approach on the part of individual drivers in order to improve road safety and reduce harm to all road users. I felt by diligently practicing the Smith System of defensive driving and advocating its use I could have a net positive effect on road safety. This may still hold true on the open highway where modifying behaviour is the only real option to improving safety but within our cities design is by far the best way to prevent failure and insure safety of all road users.
What I am finding really disturbing of late is an attitude that is displayed by growing numbers of drivers. That attitude is ‘me first’. It puts all road users at risk. On the highway, where I spend most of my time, this attitude is reflected in speeding, following too closely, cell phone use, and all forms of aggressive driving that puts the individuals perceived right to get where they need to be as quickly as possible ahead of the safety of the whole community. On reflection, all of those things also happen on the roads in my own community. It is appalling.
As professional driver’s fellow truckers, we cannot give up. I remain a strong proponent of practicing kindness and patience every minute of my day behind the wheel. I am committed to protecting the most vulnerable on our roads like the pedestrians and cyclists using that roundabout that started this conversation. I hope that you will take up that same challenge.
Trucking Industry is Largely Deaf to a Drivers Realities
This post was printed in the February 2020 edition of Today's Trucking
February 2020 is the twenty first anniversary of my first trip as a long haul trucker. Having accumulated approximately 4.5 million safe collision free kilometres over that time I remain passionate about what I do but I’m having a difficult time coming up with a positive spin on those 21 years in terms of the relationship between “drivers” and the “trucking industry”.
The independence, the freedom, and the money, all appealed to me when my eye first turned towards trucking in the late summer of 1998. I could be my own boss. Those things continue to hold true for me today. But one of the things I quickly learned about the trucking business was that information flowed from the top down and if you wanted to express your ideas and objectively criticize anything based on your firsthand experience it was truly an uphill battle. Basically the cost of your independence and freedom was shut up and follow the rules. The rules were inflexible and remain so.
When I was indoctrinated as a driver in 1999 I was taught how to manage my driver logbook to maximize my income. This education came from my fellow drivers after I had earned my AZ (class 1) licence. There was a ministry way and there was an industry way. It was a dance we all learned and everybody was content. You didn’t want to rock the boat because the system worked. When I first joined this industry safety & compliance was more about dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s than anything else. Individual common sense within the driver pool was the primary factor that insured public and personal safety. The rules could be bent but you didn’t want to get caught bending them. That was my first lasting impression.
Drivers today continue to be managed from the top down. I’m not talking about the relationship drivers have with their individual carriers. We can work for progressive carriers that care for us, listen to our concerns, and treat us accordingly, but the industry as a whole remains largely deaf to the realities a driver faces everyday on the open road and the way that experience affects us on a personal level.
I recognise this is my opinion but it is not hearsay. You only have to reflect on issues that affect drivers directly to see how little has changed over the past 2 decades. Hours of service, drug & alcohol testing, and CVSA inspections are three specific areas that are constantly trumpeted by the industry as controls to improve safety. In fact the only real change over the past 20 years is the increased enforcement levels. We now have electronic logging devices and speed limiters along with a new clearinghouse this year for U.S. drug and alcohol testing. There is no limit to the amount of money that can be spent to put systems of best practices in place to protect organizations from liability but there remains a complete lack of investment in individual drivers. The reality is that safety rests in the hands of individual drivers.
Drivers continue to do battle with a lifestyle that brings with it a high level of personal risk with little opportunity of influencing change over a system that proclaims to have their best interest at front of mind.
I was listening to a radio program about Albert Einstein on one of my trips around Christmas time and it opened with this quote. “The same problem can’t be solved by the conscience that created it.” - AE
That quotation sums up where we are at this point in time within the trucking industry. We are doing the same things with greater intensity to solve the same problems that have existed over many decades. The message from drivers is straightforward. It’s not working.
February 2020 is the twenty first anniversary of my first trip as a long haul trucker. Having accumulated approximately 4.5 million safe collision free kilometres over that time I remain passionate about what I do but I’m having a difficult time coming up with a positive spin on those 21 years in terms of the relationship between “drivers” and the “trucking industry”.
The independence, the freedom, and the money, all appealed to me when my eye first turned towards trucking in the late summer of 1998. I could be my own boss. Those things continue to hold true for me today. But one of the things I quickly learned about the trucking business was that information flowed from the top down and if you wanted to express your ideas and objectively criticize anything based on your firsthand experience it was truly an uphill battle. Basically the cost of your independence and freedom was shut up and follow the rules. The rules were inflexible and remain so.
When I was indoctrinated as a driver in 1999 I was taught how to manage my driver logbook to maximize my income. This education came from my fellow drivers after I had earned my AZ (class 1) licence. There was a ministry way and there was an industry way. It was a dance we all learned and everybody was content. You didn’t want to rock the boat because the system worked. When I first joined this industry safety & compliance was more about dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s than anything else. Individual common sense within the driver pool was the primary factor that insured public and personal safety. The rules could be bent but you didn’t want to get caught bending them. That was my first lasting impression.
Drivers today continue to be managed from the top down. I’m not talking about the relationship drivers have with their individual carriers. We can work for progressive carriers that care for us, listen to our concerns, and treat us accordingly, but the industry as a whole remains largely deaf to the realities a driver faces everyday on the open road and the way that experience affects us on a personal level.
I recognise this is my opinion but it is not hearsay. You only have to reflect on issues that affect drivers directly to see how little has changed over the past 2 decades. Hours of service, drug & alcohol testing, and CVSA inspections are three specific areas that are constantly trumpeted by the industry as controls to improve safety. In fact the only real change over the past 20 years is the increased enforcement levels. We now have electronic logging devices and speed limiters along with a new clearinghouse this year for U.S. drug and alcohol testing. There is no limit to the amount of money that can be spent to put systems of best practices in place to protect organizations from liability but there remains a complete lack of investment in individual drivers. The reality is that safety rests in the hands of individual drivers.
Drivers continue to do battle with a lifestyle that brings with it a high level of personal risk with little opportunity of influencing change over a system that proclaims to have their best interest at front of mind.
I was listening to a radio program about Albert Einstein on one of my trips around Christmas time and it opened with this quote. “The same problem can’t be solved by the conscience that created it.” - AE
That quotation sums up where we are at this point in time within the trucking industry. We are doing the same things with greater intensity to solve the same problems that have existed over many decades. The message from drivers is straightforward. It’s not working.
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