Fatigue mgmt - emerging tactics
Morning team. I colleague of mine has just attended an AU conference on emerging technologies in our industry. Noting that fatigue remains a critical risk for a tonne of our customers, I was particularly interested in the below feedback he had about emerging tactics (beyond the basics of education, driver monitoring, cab design, etc). These are some great examples of good work design in action;
- Fatigue mgmt responses now including more exploration into routing, notification of delays, monitoring time on site, traffic conditions, direction of travel, etc – to plan a drivers day in such a way that reduces likelihood of fatigue.
- When planning user journeys don’t just look at ‘the golden path’ – think always, how will someone try to break this, or game it. How can this path go wrong? How can we get them back on track?
Some of the Australians are also a long way ahead of us with fitness to drive, and fit for duty checks. Many of my AU customers go way beyond the driver declarations required (which we still don't even have), to doing in-person, or video call check-ins with drivers before a shift, and break or loading/unloading times to monitor alertness/impairment and also give drivers an opportunity to speak up if they are unfit or fatigued.
Love to hear any more innovative fatigue management strategies you are using, or have heard of?
The "Fit for Duty" I like! and I agree we don't do enough here regarding Fatigue.
The engaging with each driver each day is a big thing I am currently pushing for.
It gets up "My Goat" when Managers / supervisors say "they have enough to do"
checking on each team member should be the norm not a job
A topic well worth exploring Kelly.
From experience investigating Fatigue crashes in NZ vs AU for a large multinational our root causes were less work related that those in the Western Island.
For the NZ crashes it was what was happening away from work that had a greater influence in almost all cases.
Changing family circumstances, leisure activities and domestic tasks.
Although all our runs were scheduled to be completed well inside prescribed limits crashes still occurred.
Knowing all of the above can be difficult in a large multi depot 24/7 operation where frontline team managers may never meet the drivers during their regular shift. Worse for FTL direct customer drivers that may never visit a depot.
Improving the awareness of causation of fatigue and how to recognise early warning signs combined with a genuine process to deal (without putting any implied pressure on the drivers) with drivers that identified they may have a challenge brought the incident rate down significantly.
Technology on it's own did not solve the issue as some line managers then used the deployment of Tech as an excuse to "not worry the tech will catch it".
Lowering the culture of accepting risk and the attitude that "it will never happen to me" was an ongoing challenge.
James
