23 Nov Results from our Industry Survey are in!
DriveRisk recently sent out surveys to a broad cross-section of transport businesses across a wide range of industries. Here are a few highlights of the results sent in.
The first question was the obvious pain point:
“What are your biggest challenges with your on-road fleet at present?”
Not surprisingly, the top answer was “Finding or retaining skilled staff” at 67%.
Driver shortage is a real issue and has been for some time. Long term staff leaving due to a variety of issues, new entrants insufficiently skilled, or just simply not enough interest etc. That trend is also reflected internationally, with the US showing a gap currently at 60,000 growing to 160,000 within 5 years.
You can find more on this, in an article published by the ABC.
On a more unfortunate note, the second most common response was “Vehicle Incidents” from about one-third of respondents.
Interestingly 49% of all respondents noted at least two challenges for managing their fleet and field. With an ever-increasing demand for services, the impact on the sector is manyfold, the health, safety, wellbeing and mental health of our drivers, being the first. The sustainability of those businesses across the industry. Impacts on productivity and downtime, reporting requirements, the potential involvement of regulators, authorities and the demands for increasing amounts of paperwork. Then remediation and rectification, insurance processing and claims, all take time and resource away from the freight and business tasks.
Looking ahead to the future technology landscape in Australia:
“Have you considered the impact the Telstra 3G network closure in 2024 will have on your technology?”
Disappointingly, the message from Telco’s is not getting through to the people that need to know, as more than 34% of respondents said, “I was not aware of the network closure”.
When the 2G network was switched off, it was shut down in stages over several years, until the last tower (in Perth), which was turned off in December 2016. The 3G network will be progressively shut down in the same manner, in some areas that has already occurred as tower upgrades with 4 and 5 G take place other older technology on the towers are decommissioned, current progress toward June 2024, is approaching rapidly when viewed in terms of vehicle swap outs, new purchases now that may not be future-proofed from a communications connectivity perspective. Given this is a broader 3 G issue, not just a fleet issue, time to plan and execute your strategy is crucial – let us not add further doom and gloom to the issue with global supply chain issues for materials in modems and other electronic devices, Let us just say sooner is better than later this time.
You can find more on the 3G shutdown situation in these articles:
3G closure – what do I need to know?
Finally, we asked about the investigations behind collisions in the fleets:
“Considering your last 5 vehicle incidents, what was reported as the primary root cause?”
Distraction topped the list coming in at 41%.
This is a little higher than the most recent NTI / NTARC report – with the main reason for the difference being the incident size. The NTARC report only includes claims over $50k.
Distraction is a broad label and covers such behaviours as using a mobile phone, eating or drinking, and simply being inattentive. We don’t find this surprising as incidents caused by distraction have seen a 200% increase over 2021. (BI Stats). The second most common reason for a vehicle incident was third party caused at 22%, and only one incident was cited as being caused by fatigue.
Wrap Up
DriveRisk is the exclusive reseller for the Lytx DriveCam Safety Program in the Southern Hemisphere.
Globally, DriveCam has been deployed to over 900,000 vehicles, protecting more than 1.5 million drivers and field staff every day. DriveRisk itself manages and protects more than 45,000 vehicles and 110,000 drivers. We are a driver safety business, monitoring drivers and field staff for collision leading behaviours and if detected, helping clients to mitigate these behaviours and habits through effective coaching and education of the few drivers who display collision leading behaviours. This collaborative and positive approach to driver safety commonly achieves an 80% reduction in at-fault vehicle collisions for our clients.
DriveCam collects and curates a simply incredible amount of data and insight into behaviours, Not only just fatigue or distraction the leading causes of incidents and cause vehicle collisions, but also many of the risks we wilfully do, instead of being focused on the driving task. Lytx risk assesses more than two million trips every single week covering almost 3 BILLION kilometres of driving every month.
Look out for our 2021 National Driver Safety Report coming out early 2022. This is likely to be largest analysis of driving behaviours amongst commercial fleet operators in Australia and should provide some fascinating insights into the primary root cause(s) of collisions and near collisions ever conducted.