Transport Safety Rate

Given this institutional setting, it was logical that the traditional measure of safety should be the number of deaths per unit road travel, an apparently simple measure of how safely the road transport system was operating. This rate measure has almost universally been confined to deaths because that is aU we have been able to count accurately and in a timely manner, despite it being less than 10% of road trauma. 

The United States is one of very few countries that still use a transport safety measure as its primary measure of progress in traffic safety. One commonly reads, in most official publications out of the United States, that the per mile fatality rate is at its historically lowest point, yet its progress in traffic safety lags far behind that of most Western motorised nations. Table 3.2 compares, over a 40-year span, progress 

Deaths and Death Rates over the Past 40 Years 

Source IRTAD, IRTAD Road Safety 2010 Annual Report, ed. OECD Forum, International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group, Paris, France, 2011. IRTAD s data cover the past 40 years. 

The dramatic progress in Sweden may be indicative of a radically different approach to traffic safety, especially when recent progress is examined. In the first decade of this century, Sweden reduced the total number of deaths from road crashes by almost 8% compared with reductions of less than 3% in each of Australia and the United States. Recall that Vision Zero was adopted as a philosophy for road transport in the Swedish parliament in the late 1990s. In Chapter 8 we explore in detail how prevailing road use culture and traffic safety performance interact. Equally importantly, we explore how a focus on the rate of transport safety reinforces a belief in the inevitability of death and serious injury as a price that must be paid for personal mobility. 

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Figure 6.1, which is taken from National Transportation Safety Board data, shows the dramatic improvement in airline safety over the past 60 years. The ordinate (y axis) shows the number of fatal accidents per million scheduled departures. In the past 50 years the value has dropped from 2.8 to 0.2. (The data from 2000 to 2005 show a leveling out, which is analogous to the occupational safety rate in the process industries shown in Chapter 1.)... 

A motor carrier operating a CMV in interstate commerce (except owners or operators of CMVs designed or used to transport placardable amounts of hazardous materials) after being placed out of service because of receiving a final unsatisfactory safety rating. 

The filing of a request for change of a proposed or final safety rating does not stay the 45-day period for motor carriers transporting passengers or hazardous materials in quantities requiring placarding. 

As has been stressed many times in this book, a true transport safety pro will do more than just enough to get by. If you establish safety policies and controls that surpass the minimum regulatory requirements, the challenge of maintaining a satisfactory safety rating will take care of itself. 

Operating with an Unsatisfactory Safety Rating A motor carrier operating a commercial motor vehicle in interstate commerce after receiving a final unsatisfactory safety rating. Up to 25,000 for each violation. Each day the transportation continues constitutes a separate offense. 

Operating with an Unsatisfactory Safety Rating (transporting hazardous materials)... 

The rate at which fuel could be removed from the site was not controlled by how quickly the fuel could be removed from the reactors but by the rate at which fuel transport flasks could be prepared for dispatch. One of the limiting factors in the transport safely case, and hence the number of fuel elements that can be put into a fuel flask, is the residual heat load of the elements. During the defiielling period the beat load reduces sufficiently to allow an increased loading within the flasks by up about 20%. Revised transport safety cases were therefore prepared for irradiated fuel from defueiling which assisted in reducing the overall duration. 

Figure 10-5, Use of seat belts by car drivers and front seat passengers in Finland 1966-1995. Changes in front seat belt use rate as a function of change in belt laws and their enforcement (from WHO, 2004. Original source Seat-belts and child restraints increasing use and optimising performance. European Transport Safety Council, 1996 with permission of ETSC).

Compliance review means an on-site examination of motor carrier operations, such as drivers hours of service, maintenance and inspection, driver qualification, commercial drivers license requirements, financial responsibility, accidents, hazardous materials, and other safety and transportation records to determine whether a motor carrier meets the safety fitness standard. A compliance review may be conducted in response to a request to change a safety rating, to investigate potential violations of safety regulations by motor carriers, or to investigate complaints, or other evidence of safety violations. The compliance review may result in the initiation of an enforcement action. 

When benchmarking, both transport safety and personal safety rates are valuable comparators but, as Table 3.2 clearly shows, must also include an examination of the trends in absolute numbers. As nations road transport systems grow and mature, there is inexorable improvement in both rates, improvement that can obscure a relative lack of improvement compared with what others achieve. 

FIGURE 8.1 Seat belt wearing rates for drivers in Australia, the United States, and the UK. (Data derived from CARRS-Q, State of the Road Seat Belts, Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety, Queensland, Australia, 2012 NHTSA, Seat Belt Use in 2010—Overall Results, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, DC, 2010 ETSC, Seat Belts and Child Restraints, European Transport Safety Council, Brussels, Belgium, 2005.)... 

Distribution costs depend on plant location, physical state of the material (whether liquid, gas, or sohd), nature of the material (whether corrosive, explosive, flammable, perishable, or toxic), freight rates, and labor costs. Distribution costs may be affected by any of the following new methods of materials handling, safety regulations, productivity agreements, wage rates, transportation systems, storage systems, quality, losses, and seasonal effects. 

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