Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced plans for a study of commercial motor vehicle driver risk factors that will aid the agency in developing future safety initiatives. The purpose of the study would be to identify, verify, quantify and prioritize personal attributes – such as demographic characteristics, medical conditions, personality traits and performance capabilities – and environmental attributes, including carrier operations type and compensation methods. The study would seek a link between attributes and driving history.
Truckload Carriers Association named the grand prize winners of the 2006 National Fleet Safety Awards. Bison Transport of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, won in the category of companies operating more than 25 million miles annually, and Don Hummer Trucking of Oxford, Iowa, won in the category of companies operating less than 25 million miles annually. The two were selected from among 18 division winners in the National Fleet Safety Division Awards announced in January.
J.J. Keller & Associates Inc. recently introduced Keller-Soft Safety Incentives & Awards Tracker, a software program that helps users develop, manage and report on driver bonus and awards programs. The program is designed to allow users to select from a number of safety, longevity and performance factors in order to create and customize award programs that will suit their operation. Once driver data is input, the software maintains and reports on driver eligibility for the award programs. For more information, go to this site.
Larger carriers are more likely to govern their trucks at lower speeds than smaller carriers, the American Transportation Research Institute reported in late March. In a survey of carriers conducted earlier this year, approximately a third of carriers with 100 or fewer trucks using governors set governed speed at higher than 70 mph, while only 15 percent of larger carriers do so. Overall, 69 percent of carriers responding to the survey reported using speed governors on at least some of their trucks.
ATRI – a not-for-profit research organization affiliated with the American Trucking Associations – in late March released its preliminary analysis of results from its industry survey on speed governor use. The survey is part of a larger yearlong ATRI initiative to analyze the potential safety impacts of speed and speed differentials on trucking safety and operations.
According to the survey, just under one-third of large carriers chose a speed setting of 65 mph or lower. More than 27 percent of carriers with 10 or fewer trucks used this setting, as did about 16 percent of carriers operating 11 to 100 trucks. For carriers in the survey that use truck speed governors, the average and median speed setting is 69 mph, ATRI said. The mode – most commonly cited speed – was 70 mph.
More than a third – 37.8 percent – reported using different speeds for maximum cruise and maximum on-pedal speeds. Of those using different speeds, 61 percent set a higher on-pedal speed, typically because it allowed the driver to pass slower vehicles when necessary, ATRI said. The remaining 39 percent, however, preferred a higher cruising maximum because it encouraged more use of cruise control for fuel efficiency.
