Together for Safer Roads Begins Initiative to Reduce Fleet Trucking Traffic Incidents and Increase Road Safety

In a world where widespread use of ground transport fleets intersects with increasing traffic conditions, the odds of having to address internal risk for companies with their own fleets along with third-party &supply chain risk concerns for others is only a matter of time. Within this global environment for organizations of all types and their roads, Together for Safer Roads (TSR) announces its Fleet Trucking Global Safety Standards Initiative in effort to improve driver safety training across corporate fleets and promote advanced tools to improve road safety conditions.

 TSR is a global NGO out of Brooklyn, NY that started back in2014 to partner with government departments and agencies, corporations, and community influencers to drive the adoption of privately developed tech; as well as provide data and information to avoid and reduce road crashes, especially subsequent injuries and deaths. As an organization they have aligned themselves with Vision Zero, a movement which started in 1997 as the official road policy in Sweden but has since been adopted by countries and organizations across the globe with the goal of reaching zero traffic incidents worldwide.Their partners include Anheuser-Busch, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, the state of New York, Transport for London, UPS, as well as numerous tech innovators among others.

The Fleet Trucking Global Safety Standards Initiative was created in alignment with the UN Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety, 2021-2030, within which is a commitment to ensure the production of safer vehicles and the goal of cutting road traffic related fatalities by 50%. According to TSR, they plan “to establish industry standards for fundamental safety instruments and will result in a comprehensive suite of recommended standards for a broad cross-section of critical safety instruments and technologies.” An average of 1.4M people die every year on the road with 50M injured in crashes, 50% of those fatalities being vulnerable road users, which are defined as pedestrians, cyclists, motorcycle riders, and persons with disabilities.

These numbers are staggering on their own, but how do they tie into risk management for corporations, as well as compliance outside of following current laws and regulations for driving and vehicle specifications? Motor vehicle crashes in the US are the leading cause of work-related death, trucks particularly constituting 12% of all road fatalities despite trucks only being 4% of all vehicles on the road, according to Motor. TSR has given out several more statistics that help outline the climate for risk that organizations face today:

·     As of 2014, the number of commercial vehicles on the world’s roads was 335 million.

·     25% of all road crashes globally are of a work nature, a percentage which balloons to 50% when incidents involving commuting are included Transportation incidents account for 40% of all work-related deaths globally.

These numbers present an inherent risk for companies with fleets of vehicles and drivers on roads across the globe in what they represent: potentially massive liability issues. GPS Insight, a fleet management and field services company, found in their 2022 Fleet Safety Report that companies report an average of 4.5 incidents per driver yearly. While there is a vast array of what these incidents may include with differing levels of severity, the report also shows that more than a third of these involve the driver being at fault. There is also the risk of liability when it comes to the transportation of hazardous materials and substances: a direct risk for those freight companies who specialize in the transport of such cargo and third-party risk problems for the ones manufacturing them.

Aside from these more heavily weighted risk concerns, there are other, possibly more frequent or even permanent, intersections with GRC.For those companies with products being shipped around the world, there is the chance for blocks and breaks in supply chain whether shipped by the company’s own fleet vehicles or a third party, which could result in soured relationships whether it’s b2b, b2c, or on either side of a third-party contract. Now while these new programs and initiatives are bound to help mitigate these risk concerns, the changes they intend to bring have additional GRC implications.

With the continued efforts to achieve Vision Zero, there are inevitable procedural governance changes to take place in the form of modified and/or improved training programs for fleet drivers and accountability systems for the ones already on the road. Corporate fleets will of course have to comply with evolving road safety laws, but odds are they will also have to comply with more uniform standards for vehicle design and safety technology as well. Vehicle and safety equipment manufacturers and technology innovators will also have to comply to these changing standards, whether enforced or merely influenced by the evolving industry.

TSR intends to be in the driver’s seat of these impendingchanges to how vehicle fleets operate and are managed. They hope to create a universal standard of safety for fleet vehicles, both by partnering withgovernment organizations around the globe and corporations with large fleets of vehicles to create a top-down effect. With their Fleet Trucking Global Safety StandardsInitiative, it is TSR’s mission to promote better training programs within vehicle fleets, improved equipment to enhance driver awareness, tech that increases management quality both in training and accountability on the road, and enhanced vehicle design to improve safety conditions. One of their most recent programs is Truck of the Future, in cooperation with New York City this program has allowed for a test of a fleet vehicle with enhanced safety equipment and design, while also collecting data on how to create safer road conditions. This program is intended to go international later on in the year, collaborating with a private sector fleet from Mexico City.