Driver trainer helps road designers

Scania has assisted Safe System Solutions to deliver a Road Design for Heavy Vehicles technical training workshop for Transport for New South Wales’ road engineers in Sydney recently, sending Driver Trainer Peter Koutelis and a V8-powered prime mover hooked up to a single trailer for a real-world ride along.

The workshop aimed to give road engineers a truck driver’s experience (albeit from the passenger seat) so they could better appreciate what truckies experience daily, especially within congested urban centres.

“Few if any of the 18 road engineers taking part had ever been in a heavy truck before,” Peter said.

“It was a bit eye-opening for them to get a truck driver’s perspective of everything, from the positioning of white lines to road furniture location and intersection lane design, especially when manoeuvring a 19m truck and trailer.

They were concerned about swing-out paths, the tightness of turns and the strength of bridges," he added.

“Safety is obviously front of mind for them, and they asked about road camber and how it might affect roll-over risk. We need camber to drain rain off the road but too much can unsettle a truck.”

Aside from the view out the front, the amount of space a truck needs to negotiate turns as well as the use of mirrors, speed and active and passive safety technology were all explained by Peter, one of Scania’s most experienced Driver Trainers.

“Our Road Design for Heavy Vehicles training course examines design standards, traffic engineering and road safety with a focus on the needs of heavy vehicles from the truck cabin perspective,” said Safe System Solutions Principal Engineer, Kenn Beer.

“This includes a practical component that gives practitioners first-hand experience of the concerns and challenges faced by heavy vehicle drivers on our roads. It’s all part of our goal to make the roads a safer place for everyone. There's a huge variety of larger vehicles on our road network and their needs are very different to those of cars,” he said.