The drivers’ safety on the road is crucial for their well-being. Keeping them safe affects other drivers and your bottom line. Please read these five truck driver safety guidelines to help ensure their well-being.
1. Defensive Driving
Defensive driving means keeping your eyes and ears open for potential dangers on the road. Drivers who are unfamiliar with trucks require extra caution. Leave plenty of room in front of you. This should be approximately twice as far as the typical car driver does.
The duration taken for the truck to come to a complete stop after applying the brakes is called the stopping distance. Commercial trucks have an average stopping distance of roughly 4 seconds. With 55 mph, you still have 390 feet to stop completely.
2. Vehicle Maintenance
A heavy equipment maintenance schedule is part of what you need to keep your truck safe. Ensure you perform your pre-trip checkup. Because of the weight placed on them, the tires and the brakes are of the utmost importance.
Dispatch needs to be notified immediately of anything that seems ordinary. If you rush through some parts of your examination or gloss over certain aspects, you are putting your safety and the safety of others around you in danger.
3. Stay Alert
This is arguably the most critical advice for truck drivers’ safety that can be found anywhere. To be a good driver, you must always be aware, which entails avoiding distractions while behind the wheel. You never know what kind of drivers, road conditions, traffic patterns, or even the weather you will encounter at any given moment.
Texting while driving is the most dangerous form of distracted driving, with truck drivers having 23 times increased risk of being involved in a collision due to their behavior. Include in this list everything that will cause the driver’s attention to be diverted away from the road, such as reading a map, eating, or excessively engaging with a navigational gadget.
When you feel sleepy, you should pull over. These safety warnings are pounded into truck drivers’ heads for a legitimate reason, but it doesn’t hurt to go over them repeatedly. If something apart from driving needs your attention, then you should exit at the next junction. Remember that none of these diversions are essential enough to warrant putting your life in jeopardy.
4. Routes and Trip Planning
If you plan your trip, you will be conscious of the weather and road conditions and any detours, construction zones, or other difficulties along the way. Truck drivers may never find the most comprehensive or accurate information on applications and non-commercial GPS navigation systems.
They also do not provide any warnings on weight or height restrictions. Invest in a global positioning system (GPS) individually tailored for truck drivers and display crucial information such as the appropriate exits to make, the distance remaining till the exit, the reasonable time to change lanes, etc. You shouldn’t put all of your faith in a single source; instead, you should cross-reference the information you have.
5. Leverage on Dashboard Cameras
Managers should also investigate the usage of dashboard cams in addition to the utilization of telematics. Another piece of technology that could assist make driving less dangerous is this one.
Trucks now come equipped with cameras to monitor the cab’s interior and exterior. They also send notifications to fleet managers if drivers engage in risky behaviors. Additionally, the camera technology can be utilized to interact with the drivers. This translates to the fact that supervisors can now provide bonuses for truckers in real-time. This enables an efficient feedback and warning mechanism.
In addition, dashboard cameras are crucial witnesses in accident claims because they provide a valuable film of severe accidents that may be used during filing claims. Possessing these video recordings can save the costs of filing a claim by a significant amount.
It’s also possible for dashboard cameras to cut down on insurance rates. According to several sources, most trucking businesses devote approximately thirty percent of their fleet budgets to covering the costs of preventable incidents.
Utilizing technology that improves trucking safety could bring this amount down to a level that is more manageable financially. Because of this, these innovations promise a high potential return on investment.
Conclusion
The execution of these five uncomplicated actions does not call for a significant amount of time or money investment. We wish to believe that they are essentially just using their basic logic. Despite this, they can guarantee that you will get home without incident after a hard day on the road.
