Tag Archives: incident reporting

How to Manage Truck Driver Fatigue: Ensuring Safety Behind the Wheel

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Graphic of a truck driver falling asleep at the wheel

Truck drivers, often regarded as the unsung heroes of the road, are the backbone of road freight and logistics. Their job is to facilitate the transportation of large quantities of heavy goods or materials from suppliers to clients at their designated destinations. Operating within a global market of more than $2.5 trillion, freight drivers are the ones who ensure timely deliveries, safeguard the integrity of cargo and sustain the efficiency of the entire distribution network.

Being a truck driver is not easy. In their demanding profession, freight operators face numerous risks on the road, ranging from unpredictable traffic and adverse weather conditions to mechanical failures and distracted driving. One of the most significant and potentially lethal hazards they can experience is driver fatigue, which compromises their alertness and significantly increases the likelihood of accidents. At least 13% of serious truck crashes in the USA can be associated with truck driver … Read more...

The culture of denial, workplace injuries and lessons learned

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Try to imagine this workplace injury scenario: A construction worker is seriously hurt on the job. It’s a very minor injury. Years later, under similar circumstances, a worker is killed from a similar incident. Why didn’t the company learn from the first incident?

Recent research in the International Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics suggests three barriers to learning from previous workplace injuries and how companies can overcome them. In Workplace accidents as a source of knowledge: opportunities and obstacles, author Hernani Neto of the Univeresity of Porto, Portugal, suggests workplace injuries and other safety incidents must be understood as a source of knowledge.

However, here is another point that companies need to understand: Safety incidents don’t automatically become an effective source of knowledge. Companies have to work at it. Just because a company suffered a close call or an incident with an employee suffering only minor injuries doesn’t mean … Read more...