Whether its taking the kids to school, driving to work or driving for work, driving vehicles is one of the riskiest things we all do. Road conditions, weather conditions and the behaviour of other roads users are all out of our control but we can control our own ability to give driving the respect it demands. The technology we have in our fleet plays a big role in getting our people home safely everyday but it is only one piece of the system. Fatigue Management is a critical part of how we support our people, our partners and other road users to try to address New Zeland’s poor road toll.
After noting EYESUPNZ was travelling the country but missing our city we touched base with the team at AutoSense to see if we could provide the support needed to get them here in the Naki. We were both priviledged to host and appreciative of the knowledge Greg, Rachel and Fiona presented to our team thoughout the couple of hours we spent together.
After a quick intro from the GM, Greg Murphy kicked things off summarising the road he has travelled to get him to where he is today. Greg is passionate about improving our safety on the roads and that shone through very brightly to the team. The majority of the room were truck drivers but the message is the same for any road user: Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel and mind on the job.
Rachel Lehan from Fit For Duty then spoke about the importance of good quality sleep and some of the ways we might be able to identify if we have an underlying sleep disorder. While we’re not sure if we agree that females purr rather than snore, Rachel certainly got people thinking about their situations.
Fiona Weston finished things off with some of the things AutoSense is learning from the data they have collected over the last half a decade operating in NZ. Symons Transport was one of the first companies to come on board with the Seeing Machine technology and since then AutoSense have grown to a fleet of nearly 4,000 units in operation across the country. A very sobering statistic that Fiona mentioned is they see an average of 40 ‘fatigue events’ per day. When you consider that they are only measuring from 3,700 of the four million vehicles on the road in New Zealand, it hammers home how big an issue it is.
We encourage everyone out there to have a look at the EyesUp website and get in touch, they have some great resources on there. If you click on Murph below, it will take you to their website.
Thanks again to Murph and the team.
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If you’re tired, please pull over and take a break. If you are tempted to send a quick text, don’t!