Stopped Trucks Carry Hidden Risk
A truck stopped on the highway shoulder is dangerous for its driver and everyone coming up behind it. Traffic speeds by, a driver who comes up too fast has little time to react, and big trucks need far longer to stop than cars.
Some stops can’t be avoided. A truck breaks down, or a driver gets sick. But sometimes a driver just pulls over to rest or make a call. That stop should be avoided.
Without a way to see stops as they happen, a fleet can’t tell the two apart. It doesn’t know how often drivers stop this way or how long a truck sits there.
Early Warnings Change how Drivers Act
A study of Ohio’s alert program looked at slowdown alerts, which warn truck drivers about traffic trouble ahead. It tracked secondary crashes, which are crashes caused by an earlier crash. After the alerts began, they fell 29% for trucks.
Fleetworthy also compared two groups of drivers on the same roads at the same time. One group got alerts. The other did not. About a quarter more alerted drivers slowed by 5 mph or more. As the whitepaper puts it, “What separates the two groups is what happens before traffic forces the slowdown.”
Stopped Vehicle Alerts, part of Fleetworthy Safety+, use the same idea for a truck stopped on the shoulder. They work two ways. First, the fleet's safety team gets a message right away, day or night. The team can check that the driver is safe and ask if the stop is needed at all. Second, Safety+ shares verified stops with apps like Waze and Apple Maps, so drivers coming up behind the truck get a warning that can help prevent crashes.
What One Fleet Did with the Alerts
KLLM Transport put this to work. The carrier runs about 1,500 trucks. Before it turned on Stopped Vehicle Alerts, it had no way to see shoulder stops.
“That stop vehicle alert is working extremely well,” said Wilson Risinger, safety leader at KLLM. “It’s one of those behavior-changing technology events.”
KLLM made a rule: every alert gets a call to the driver, no exceptions. Risinger even follows up with night dispatch from home.
At first, many alerts were for breaks and other stops that didn’t belong on the shoulder. Drivers learned that every stop would get a call, and unauthorized stops fell to near zero. “Now the alerts we get are almost entirely legitimate reasons,” Risinger said.
The calls also help with real stops. Each call now includes a safety check: are the flashers on, are the warning triangles out? Dispatch wasn’t always asking those questions until the alert gave them a reason.
The Call Matters Most
An alert is only a signal. KLLM’s results came from what it did next: calling every driver, leaders setting the example, and holding everyone to the same rule. The alert gets a fleet’s attention. What happens on the next call changes the outcome.
Get started with Fleetworthy Safety+ to see how.
Fleetworthy offers the only complete technology suite for fleet readiness, uniting safety and compliance, toll management, and weigh station bypass solutions. Trusted by 90% of the largest fleets in North America, Fleetworthy offers the most adopted toll management solution and largest weigh station bypass network. Going beyond regulatory requirements, our safety and compliance capabilities strengthen safety programs and enable proactive audit readiness. We support millions of vehicles and drivers and are recognized across the industry for innovation and leadership. Fleetworthy is shaping the future of fleet readiness with AI-enabled, connected fleet technology that keeps drivers safe, fleets compliant, and operations running at peak efficiency. Learn more at fleetworthy.com
The above article is sponsor-generated content. To learn more about sponsor-generated content, click here.