When it comes to finding ways to improve safety at work, it's important to understand where most of the risk is. Safe Work Australia statistics show that nearly half of all workplace fatalities and serious trauma are motor-vehicle related. It’s occurring in both heavy and light vehicles, impacting both white-collar and blue-collar workers. So, how to address it?
Getting road-safety right within an organisation can be challenging because, typically, much of it happens off-premises. How do you get visibility and protect people "working behind the wheel".
The good news is that it can be done. However, to get it done properly it's important to understand two key things:
- where most of the risk is, and
- the level of information required to properly identify and address it.
There's a common misconception, held by many executives and information system suppliers, that when addressing speed, it's only necessary to address risk-events over and above 100km/h. Whilst 'high-level' speeding must be addressed, it could be argued that if that's all you're addressing, then you've only covered about 10% of the risk. That's because you'd have not recognised the need to address the risk of 'low-level' speeding; its impact on fatalities AND serious trauma.
Here are 2 key statistics that illustrate the enormity of 'low-level' speeding risk:
1/ Most fatalities occur in speed zones BELOW 100km/h
Motor Vehicle Fatalities by Speed Zone Australia 2018
Source of Data: Road Trauma Australia 2018 Statistical Summary, Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE)
2/ The vast bulk of serious trauma occurs below 60km/h
• Most vehicle-related serious trauma occurs at speeds 60km/h and below
• The ratio of serious trauma to fatalities is currently running at 9:1
Source: NRSPP Quick Facts
Getting to grips with low-level speeding
20 Km/h Over, 30 Times the Risk
In the NRSPP Webinar "Debunking the Myths Around 'Low-Level' Speeding" Prof. Ian Johnston cited research findings suggesting that "if vehicles were doing 80 in a 60 zone, the risk of a casualty crash was about 30 times what it was if they were doing the speed limit".
Travelling Speed and the Risk of Involvement in a Casualty Crash Relative to Travelling at 60 km/h in a 60 km/h Speed Limit Zone
Source: Table 4.3, Travelling Speed and the Risk of Crash Involvement, Volume 1 - Findings, Kloeden CN, McLean AJ, Moore VM, Ponte G, NHMRC Road Accident Research Unit, The University of Adelaide.
Note that going 85km/h in a 60km/h zone increased the relative risk to 56 times.
So, there's significant risk in 'low-speed' zones. Therefore, to address safety, organisations need to find ways to moderate their workers' driving behaviour across all speed zones; not just focus on speeding risk over and above 100km/h.
The quality of information required to understand driver behaviour and PREVENT crashes from happening
Some organisations implement telematics systems believing that it will help them address safety; buyer-beware, outcomes vary in terms of both degree and duration of outcomes. With telematics, as with any data system, the results you get are heavily reliant on the quality of the information feed.
When the desired safety outcome is proactive risk prevention, there are two key factors that must be satisfied:
1. gathering information across all posted speed zones (for reasons outlined above), and
2. second-by-second data capture.
Second-by-second data capture, it's the difference between being able to not just analyse 'who is going to crash' but 'why they're going to crash'.
Once the 'why' is understood, you can provide targeted interventions BEFORE they crash. This will:
• dramatically transform your safety processes;
• get traction with savvy insurers - see this excellent Willis Towers Watson article 'Not all telematics data is created equally' for more information.
In Summary
For the reasons outlined above, to know where the risk is, your safety system must gather information:
1. across all posted speed limits.
2. with second-by-second data capture.
Cutting corners on the above is the road to regret. To put that in context, ask yourself this - when it comes to preventing fatalities and serious trauma, will a safety information system that ignores 90% of the risk:
• protect workers?
• protect directors and officers?
• stand up in a Coroner’s court?
Please feel welcome to contact me if you’d like to discuss your organisation’s safety systems and processes.
Duncan Ferguson
Head of Fleet & Human Factors, Mercurien