by Ronald R. Knipling, Ph.D. President, Safety for the Long Haul Inc.rrknipling@gmail.com March, 2022 If you own or operate any kind of work vehicle fleet, whether a truck transport fleet or a non-transport service fleet, you should be aware that liability from rear-end road crashes is among the biggest threats you face. Road crashes are […]
by Ronald R. Knipling, Ph.D. President, Safety for the Long Haul Inc. January, 2021 If you are the owner or operator of a motor transport or other work vehicle fleet, you have probably gotten that phone call from one of your drivers. The driver calls in to report their involvement in an on-job traffic crash. […]
by Ronald R. Knipling, Ph.D. President, Safety for the Long Haul Inc. December, 2021 An oilfield services company in South Texas employed just one mechanic to maintain its entire vehicle fleet, which included tractor-semitrailers, pickup trucks, and other work vehicles. We’ll call him Mr. Alvarez, not his real name. Mr. Alvarez worked 78-hour weeks, on […]
by Ronald R. Knipling, Ph.D. President, Safety for the Long Haul Inc. October, 2021 A 2014 investigational analysis of large truck fatal crashes in Sweden (Bálint et al., 2014) attributed 17% of them to suspected suicide. The two major suicide scenarios were cars (or other light vehicles) crossing the highway centerline and pedestrians stepping out […]
by Ronald R. Knipling, Ph.D. President, Safety for the Long Haul Inc. August, 2021 Here’s a quiz with just one question: Which of five factors affects driver fatigue (i.e., drowsiness) and alertness the least? Your five choices are: Individual differences in susceptibility to drowsiness Amount of prior sleep Time-of-day Prior continuous time awake Prior continuous […]
by Ellen Voie, President/CEO, Women in Trucking July, 2021 A decade ago, when I’d stand in front of trucking company executives to talk about Women In Trucking (WIT), their comments were typically dispassionate. “We don’t care if the driver is male or female,” was the usual response. “We just want good drivers.” I would […]
by Dave Elniski, B.Sc., ATCL, CTSP June, 2021 The original version of this essay won the 2021 OHS Healthy Workplaces Award from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension and has been re-published with their permission. Do you think that the North American long-haul trucking industry is a leader in worker mental health wellness? Do […]
Ronald R. Knipling, Ph.D. President, Safety for the Long Haul Inc. Do you have a safety personality behind the wheel? Yes! Everyone has a safety personality. That’s because everyone has a personality, and several universal personality dimensions affect safety behavior. Driver personality is the strongest of various personal factors affecting safety outcomes, in my opinion. […]