Pick the Right Systems for Fleet Safety

Any fleet manager will tell you that safety is a top priority. Though there’s been an overall decline in large truck crash fatalities and truck-involved crashes in recent years, 2022 still saw 120,200 large trucks involved in injury-resulting crashes, according to a National Safety Council report. That’s not to say that truck drivers were at fault for all of them. According to researchers, the opposite is usually true.

In a study of national crash data on fatal two-vehicle accidents involving a heavy truck from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, the car driver is responsible for 81% of crashes. This hasn’t stopped juries from awarding plaintiffs in truck-car accidents a nuclear verdict — when damages exceed $10 million — at increasing frequencies over the years.

Fleets can try to insulate themselves from these high-dollar damage awards by equipping truck safety systems when making a purchase.

It Starts With Brakes

Air disc brakes (ADBs) are a good place to start when helping a fleet spec for safety. According to Mark Holley, director of Marketing and Customer Solutions at Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems, ADBs are resistant to brake fade, which helps with stopping distances following multiple hard-braking events. In an interview with Truckinginfo.com, he says that over 10 hard stops, the difference in stopping distance between the drum and the disc can increase from one or two car lengths to up to 75 feet.

Next, consider recommending some, or all, of the technologies that make up advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). To help with spec’ing for safety, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration launched the TechCelebrate Now program to accelerate ADAS adoption through funding and technical support. A short informational flyer from the agency states, “ADAS can help drivers avoid crashes, whether they result from driver error or circumstances outside the driver’s control.”

For fleets that report a large number of hard braking instances, have a history of being involved in accidents where a truck rear-ends the vehicle in front of it, or operate in urban environments with a lot of stop-and-go traffic, automatic emergency braking (AEB) and adaptive cruise control (ACC) are two good options.

ACC automatically adjusts the vehicle’s speed to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front of it, which is especially useful when a truck is in heavy traffic. Further, AEB systems can detect when a truck is in danger of hitting a vehicle. The Truck Safety Coalition concluded that 41% of large truck front-to-rear crashes could be prevented if the trucks had been spec’d with AEBs.

Add Warning Systems

Lane keeping and lane departure warning systems monitor the truck’s position and warn the driver when the vehicle gets too close to the next lane of traffic without the truck’s directional signal being activated. More advanced systems go beyond just warning the driver and actually apply the brakes and slow the vehicle’s speed when this happens.

Collision mitigation systems warn drivers when a vehicle is encroaching on their space and has cut in too close for the truck to be able to stop safely if needed. These systems are well-suited for fleets whose trucks spend the majority of their time on highways where there may be a higher likelihood that a car will change lanes and pull in too close to the truck.

Highway fleets will also benefit from blind spot detection systems. Trucks have significant blind spots around the front, back and sides of them, which prevents drivers from being able to see other vehicles. These systems are designed to help drivers change lanes safely by monitoring their blind spots and alerting them to any hazards.

Don’t Forget the Driver

Regardless of which safety systems you advise your fleet customers to spec, remember they won’t work properly if drivers don’t understand how they operate. Offer to assist fleets with training so drivers will be comfortable using the systems.

It’s important to remind fleets and drivers that as good as these systems are, they’re no substitute for drivers being alert, engaged and paying attention to their speed, following distances and other vehicles on the road so they can respond quickly in the event of a problem. They can do so with the confidence that if their best efforts aren’t enough, the safety systems that have been spec’d on their trucks give them an added layer of safety.