Safety a heavy responsibility

Studies also indicate that 42 per cent of heavy vehicle crashes involved both fatigue and speeding.

Mohammad Khan has been a truck driver in the UAE for almost a decade now, carrying various goods from food to electronics and other merchandise from Dubai ports to all parts of the country. Still young and robust in his mid-30s, he says he used to drive easily for six hours straight until one day, when he felt fatigue and had a near-fatal accident.
Road safety experts said "fatigue is recognised as a major risk factor for all drivers and a known contributing factor to road crashes. Driver fatigue affects everyone and can strike at any time, no matter how experienced the driver is."
International estimates suggest fatigue is a factor in up to 30 per cent of fatal crashes and 15 per cent of serious injury crashes worldwide. In the heavy vehicle industry, fatigue is thought to have contributed to approximately 25 per cent of insurance losses.

Studies also indicate that 42 per cent of heavy vehicle crashes involved both fatigue and speeding.
The risks associated with fatigue are greater for heavy vehicle drivers primarily because of the nature and demands of their job. They have long working hours, prolonged night work and they work on irregular hours with poor quality sleep.
"And because of the mass and rigidity of heavy vehicles, when they are involved in a road accident, injury risk to all road users is high," experts said.
According to the Dubai Police, there were 73 serious accidents involving trucks in Dubai last year and 99 accidents caused by heavy vehicles in 2016. Fourteen died because of truck-related accidents in 2017 and 36 in 2016. And 109 injuries were registered in 2017 as against 187 in 2016.
Although the horrible figures are decreasing, truck and trailer safety issues remain an area of focus, especially in light of Dubai's target of zero casualties per 100,000 residents by 2020 and the UAE's target of three casualties per 100,000 national population by 2021.

Notably in the UAE, there is no maximum hours a truck driver can be on the road. In this regard, road safety experts are campaigning to put a cap time for heavy vehicle drivers at the wheel to improve road safety.
According to Thomas Edelmann, founder and managing director of RoadSafetyUAE (RSU), the ideal mark is to follow the EU (European Union) standard mandating driving time should not exceed nine hours a day or 56 hours a week. And after 4.5 hours on the road, drivers must take a break of at least 45 minutes.
"This must go hand in hand with creating the proper infrastructure like resting areas. Tachographs (a record of engine speed over a period, especially in a commercial road vehicle), ideally electronic ones, need to be mandatory and the police must enforce the rules," Edelmann adds.
"Unless action is taken, road traffic injuries are predicted to become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030," Arundhan Alphones, Tristar Group assistant GM for operations of road transport and warehousing, told Khaleej Times.
"We have a strict working hours policy that total driving hours should be maximum 9 hours only and that maximum continuous driving should be 4.5 hours only. This summer we try to avoid driving during noontime till mid-day and we are instructing our drivers to have more frequent breaks for 15 minutes after driving for two hours. We also ask them to drink water every 15 to 20 minutes and take special care when temperatures are above 38ºC or during periods of high humidity," he added.
"Road traffic injuries remain a major public health issue despite progress in a number of countries. Adherence to road safety rules is the only way that road accidents can be reduced. This is the reason why we put emphasis on shaping the attitudes and behavior of drivers, whether they are from Tristar or other transport entities."
angel@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai