Opinion: Out of the Lab, Into the Cab

By Robert Petrancosta

Vice President of Safety

Con-way Freight

This Opinion piece appears in the June 28 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

June is National Safety Month, a particularly relevant observance this year as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration makes final revisions to its operational model for the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 program, with implementation expected as early as December.

While CSA 2010 will institute stricter monitoring and measuring truck driver and trucking company safety performance, improving safety through effective regulatory policy is only one part of the equation. Many in the trucking industry are stepping up, checkbooks in hand, to invest in new technologies and driver training with significant promise for reducing accident frequency — and are driving even greater safety improvements.

These technologies specifically focus on providing early warning — and prevention — of the three most common causes of commercial motor vehicle accidents: front-end collision, lane change or departure and vehicle rollover.

The following are among the technologies already out of the lab and ready for implementation.

• Front-end collision avoidance: This warning and avoidance technology uses adaptive cruise control to automatically help a vehicle maintain a safe following distance behind the vehicle ahead — accelerating or decelerating as needed in the absence of driver action. The system uses forward-looking radar sensor technology to detect a potential collision and then sends audible and visual warnings to the driver by means of an in-cab display.

A similar system under development for rear collisions uses rear-facing radar to detect a vehicle approaching the back of a truck. The system then activates warning lights on the back of the truck to alert the oncoming driver.

• Roll stability control: This technology senses when driving conditions or vehicle performance tendencies are consistent with a vehicle about to roll over. When the system senses rollover conditions, an indicator lamp on the dashboard alerts the driver. Even if the driver does not feel or sense the possibility of a rollover, the system will respond by decreasing engine torque.

• Lane-departure warning: By monitoring a vehicle’s position relative to highway lane markings, this technology sounds an alarm to alert the vehicle operator to the possibility of driving out of the lane inadvertently. The system uses image-recognition software to determine that the vehicle is drifting out of the intended lane and automatically emits an audible warning similar to the sound made when a vehicle travels over a highway rumble strip. That alerts the driver to make a correction.

These three technological advances are particularly important — and exciting — because they are “detect, alert and respond” systems that can prevent crashes in a variety of circumstances, including driver fatigue or distraction. Con-way Freight is using them in the more than 1,200 new power units it is putting into service this year to replace older equipment.

Driver behavior and training is another key safety focus. FMCSA’s new, Web-based system to enhance skills testing will be rolled out soon, and in anticipation, many carriers have initiated programs to retrain existing drivers on the new technologies and policies and provide enhanced training programs for new drivers.

The flip side of our technological revolution requires that we know when not to use certain technological tools when behind the wheel of a commercial vehicle — specifically cell phones and texting devices.

A recent study conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute using longhaul truck drivers concluded that when drivers “texted” while driving, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting. There are three basic types of driver distraction and the use of texting devices involves all three:

• Visual.

• Manual.

• Cognitive.

Another example from the VTTI study: Research shows that when they are texting, drivers take their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds out of every 6 seconds. That means that at 55 mph, texting drivers will travel the length of a football field — including the end zones — without looking at the road.

Simple vehicle modifications such as in-dash radios and voice-activated Global Positioning System devices can cut down on the dangers of driver distraction.

As motor carriers invest in new safety technologies and participate in the development of new regulatory policies to further improve safety performance, the good news is that these efforts are happening at a time when trucking safety has seen dramatic improvement.

An American Transportation Research Institute analysis of data from approximately 260 motor carriers representing 127,000 commercial drivers found that the total collision rate dropped 11.7% from 2004 to 2009. Preventable collisions declined 30.6% during the same period.

As more and more high-tech measures are deployed nationally, collision numbers should continue to go down, making our highways even safer. And that’s something to celebrate — not just during National Safety Month, but all year long.

A 41-year trucking industry veteran, the author began as a driver and still maintains his commercial driver license. Less-than-truckload carrier Con-way Freight, Ann Arbor, Mich., is a subsidiary of Con-way Inc.