Trucking is a way of life for thousands of British Columbians. Truckers love their trucks and being out on the road. What is it about a big diesel purring under the hood, an open stretch of road and jamming gears that makes drivers put up with long hours of work, bad road and weather conditions and being away from their families? It s a good way to make a living, but it s killing people, particularly in BC s logging industry. Last year alone, nine logging truck drivers were killed in BC. So far in 2006, there have been three fatalities and more than 10 serious injuries that we know of. Over the past five years, from September 2001 to September 2006, 25 log truckers have died in the province. The question is, of course, why? Why so many deaths? Why so many injuries? Why so many crashes? The Forestry TruckSafe program was implemented by the BC Forest Safety Council to find answers to those questions, and then to build solutions together with truckers, industry and government. Numerous meetings and two Summits later, a long list of contributing factors was identified none of which will be a surprise to truckers. The most common: speed, turnaround (cycle) times, fatigue, lack of seatbelt use, road conditions, lack of enforcement, confusion about regulations, improper radio use, hours of driving, drug use, poor driver training, the mix of industrial trucks and the public on many of the roads, and a shortage of drivers. Somehow it s always easier to identify the problems than to find the solutions. With each of the issues in that list comes a collection of other factors and questions. If a driver is speeding, why is he speeding? Is the turnaround time too short? Did he have to wait too long to get loaded or unloaded? Is he short on hours of driving time because of other delays in his day? Is he trying to get home to the kids hockey game? And then there s enforcement. Who s in charge where? Who has jurisdiction over what? Who do we talk to for information? How do we know when the regulations have been changed? Most truckers say the answer to that one is when I get a ticket . So, where do we start with this mess? Because we do have to clean it up, that s clear. The BC Forest Safety Council believes that all forestry fatalities and injuries are preventable. Under that umbrella, the Forestry TruckSafe program s mandate is to promote safe drivers, safe vehicles, safe resource roads, safe conduct on public highways and vehicle safety awareness generally in the forest sector. Road safety strategies all over the world involve the 3E s: Engineering, Education and Enforcement. Forestry TruckSafe is adding a fourth E Engagement. Engineering, enforcement and education alone will not make trucking in the forest industry safe if drivers don t buy in to the need to be safe, that it s the right thing to do. Seatbelt education and enforcement have been around for decades and yet the vast majority of truckers admit they don t wear them. Why? Because they don t believe seatbelts save lives. The old myth of I have to be able to jump still has a strong hold. Likewise, impaired driving education and enforcement has been high profile for many years, yet people still get caught all the time. And even scarier, many of them were behind the wheel of a big rig at the time. Fingers get pointed at roads, and maintenance, and the economy, and cycle times, and all the other issues and factors that are part of hauling wood and wood products around the province. Road and weather conditions change continually; work situations come and go over time, and enforcement efforts ebb and wane. The forest industry has undergone substantial changes over the past three decades, and economically BC has been through a number of boom and bust cycles in that same period of time. The consistent bottom line through all those years has been that loggers and truckers have died at the average rate of 30 per year since 1972. When it comes right down to it, safety is an attitude. Driver behaviors behind the wheel reflect the driver s attitude towards safety. When drivers value getting home safely to their families at night more than getting their next load, and do their best to ensure that the folks they share the road with do the same, the number of crashes will go down. That means driving to conditions, choosing not to speed, choosing to observe the rules of the road, and being observant of your driving environment. There s not a log or a stick of lumber worth dying for! Future columns of Safety Behind the Wheel will be looking at individual issues, how they re being addressed and how that s going to affect drivers and the driving environment. We need to work together until all drivers believe that Unsafe is Unacceptable . MaryAnne Arcand is the Director of Forestry TruckSafe, an initiative of the BC Forest Safety Council. You can contact her at (250) 612-2267 or <arcand@bctrucksafe.org>.
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