A review of almost two decades of data since NTI commenced its landmark Major Accident Report back in 2005 reveals significant improvements in the trucking industry’s safety performance, but challenges remain.
Despite significant increases in freight movements and traffic volumes, data from NTARC Major Accident Investigation Reports, produced since 2005 by leading transport and logistics insurer NTI, shows that heavy-vehicle-involved road crash deaths have consistently declined.
While the just-released 2022 report (based on 2021 data) shows little change on the 2021 results (based on 2020 data), an in-depth examination of the historical data set shows a significant reduction in both major crashes as well as deaths involving trucks.
Taking account of a 55 per cent increase in trucks on the road (to 640,651) and a 51 per cent rise in road freight volumes (to 224.6 billion-tonne-per-kilometre) since 2003, the data reveals a combination of tighter government regulation and industry investment in safety, technology, professional development and leadership has seen a steady decline of around 0.04 deaths/BTK per year in all heavy-truck-involved road crash deaths over the period.
Truck occupant crash deaths have remained largely static at around 0.17 for every billion-tonne-kilometres of freight moved.
NTI Transport Research Manager, Adam Gibson agrees the numbers tell a largely positive story of improvements over the past two decades.
“Things are improving, with fewer deaths in Australia from accidents involving trucks. But the flipside is that the number of truck drivers dying in road accidents has remained stable at around 35 per year over the past decade,” he adds.
The Good
Undoubtedly, the biggest improvement over the past two decades has been in the reduction in major incidents where fatigue and inappropriate speed for the prevailing conditions were found to be the dominant cause.
Back in 2005, fatigue and inappropriate speed were found to be responsible for more than one in two serious truck crashes (57.1 per cent). In 2021, this declined to 20.7 percent.
Following the introduction of driving hours reforms and standardised logbooks in most states and territories in 2008, fatigue-related incidents dropped from a high of 27.3 per cent to a low of eight per cent in the 2020 study, before rising marginally to 8.2 per cent in the latest report.
Notably, 2009 data shows that fatigue-related serious truck crashes fell by a massive 50 percent just a year after the implementation of the reforms to account for just 10 per cent of major crashes.
Gibson notes, however, that NTI data reveals the improvement is not just due to a reduction in hours worked, but more so a change in the previous industry mentality of “just keep driving until the job is done”.
Inappropriate Speed
Aside from fatigue, the other key improvement over the past two decades is in the proportion of major crashes caused by inappropriate speed for the conditions.
Inappropriate speed is where the proximate cause of the crash was that the speed of the vehicle was incompatible with the vehicle dynamics, road geometry and/or prevailing weather and road conditions – that is, it’s not about exceeding the sign-posted limit.
Back in 2003, inappropriate speed was the dominant cause of 26.1 per cent of major incidents – rising to 27.3 per cent in 2005, 27.4 per cent in 2007 and a high of 31.8 per cent in 2009.
Encouragingly, this dropped to 26.1 per cent in 2011, 21.4 per cent in 2015, 13.8 per cent in 2020 and to a record low of 12.5 per cent in 2021.
Gibson attributes this stark advance to two major factors: the roll-out of COR laws from 2014, which placed a legal obligation on all parties in the chain to take all reasonable steps to ensure drivers do not commit a speeding offence; and the increased use of heavy vehicle stability safety technologies, specifically electronic braking systems (EBS) and electronic stability control (ESC).
Truck and Car Crashes
While the long-term NTARC data shows a vast majority of truck driver deaths involve single-vehicle incidents, since 2009 it has consistently highlighted that in fatal truck and car crashes, the truck driver is not at fault in most cases.
Back then, the truck driver was found to be not at fault in 82 per cent of fatal crashes, and while this dropped to 70 per cent in 2021, Gibson says it still reflects that in a significant majority of these crashes, the truck is not at fault.
By contrast, the distribution of fault for non-fatal car and truck crashes has remained consistent over the past two decades, with the truck driver at fault in 65.3 per cent of incidents in 2021 compared with 61.6 per cent back in 2005.
“So, the data shows that the key beneficiaries of the safety improvements have been car drivers, not truck drivers.”
The Bad
In sharp contrast to the long-term reduction in incidents caused by fatigue and inappropriate speed, the NTARC data exposes a dramatic increase in major accidents caused by ‘human factors’.
Grouped for the first time in the 2022 report, ‘human factors’ include fatigue and inappropriate speed, but more importantly inattention/distraction, inappropriate vehicle positioning and inadequate following distance.
Combined, these factors now represent nearly two out of every three serious crashes (63.5 per cent), up just over one percentage point on prior years.
Of these, inattention/distraction and inappropriate vehicle positioning (including striking awnings and other structures, dropping into culverts, off weighbridges or otherwise failing to keep the vehicle on the roadway) have trended significantly upwards over time, with the former rising from 6.7 per cent in 2017 to 14.3 per cent in 2019 and to 16.3 per cent in 2021; and the latter almost doubling from 5.4 per cent in 2017 to 10.5 per cent in 2021.