Driver fatigue management goes high tech

To achieve Pacific Fuel Haul’s vision of becoming “a global leader in specialised liquid transportation” we believe we must have leading edge technology in our business that enables us to deliver the highest level of performance.

One of the areas we are passionate about making improvement is the driver fatigue management space. Driver fatigue is a serious issue which can be difficult to detect and manage with a 24/7 business model such as Pacific Fuel Haul. Insurance provider NZI Lumley says that anecdotally “fatigue would have been involved in 70% of the top 100 claims for 2016”. Research has also found that one fatigue event is likely to occur every 50 operating hours.

Although we have controls in place such as logbook management, fit for work policies along with driver training modules around the topic of fatigue, Pacific Fuel Haul is always searching for technology or tools that can help increase our ability to better manage the topic of driver fatigue.

Over the last few months we have been carrying out a trial on a fatigue management tool called “seeing machines” made by a company called Guardian. The Seeing Machine has a camera in the truck which is focused on the drivers eyes and picks up any events where the drivers eyes are not focused on the road for more than 4 seconds. These events trigger the driver’s seat to vibrate helping alert the driver but the event is also immediately sent to their manager who then is able to take proactive action to address the fatigue issue with the driver.

Our trial has proved highly successful with all of the drivers involved with each seeing the real benefits of how this technology could support them in the workplace.  As a result the technology concept is something we will invest in further to support our drivers and enable PFH to continue its push towards zero harm in the workplace.  We are currently trailing a second fatigue product from Drivecam (an existing supplier) and a decision on which system we will adopt will be made in the coming months.