Toll: maintenance only part of the picture

Toll boss Brian Kruger says maintenance shouldn't overshadow the issues of fatigue and speed when it comes to addressing heavy vehicle safety

The Managing Director of Toll Group, Brian Kruger, has stressed the importance of a holistic approach to heavy vehicle safety, urging that maintenance – a topic that's become a prime focus in the heavy vehicle industry since the Cootes tanker tragedy of October last year – shouldn't overshadow other leading causes of heavy vehicle accidents.

Speaking with trucksales.com.au after Toll Group's Annual General Meeting in Melbourne yesterday (October 23), Mr Kruger said a balanced approach was crucial to improving heavy vehicle safety.

"I don't think the focus on maintenance practices should take away from focuses on the other key drivers of road-related incidents around fatigue and speed," he said.

"From Toll's experience we probably have more on-road incidents – whether it's us or our contractors – where there would be some concern from a speed or a fatigue point of view than we do from maintenance.

"It doesn’t mean we shouldn't be good at all three – in fact you need to be great at all three. But we can't, as an industry and as a company, lose sight of continuing to work on fatigue-related and speed-related issues."

Mr Kruger says Toll Group hasn't altered its approach to heavy vehicle maintenance in the past year but it has revisited its procedures.

He also says the operator is at the forefront of heavy vehicle safety technology. Toll has rolled out both forward- and rear-facing cameras in many of its trucks, which it says allows it to examine the causal factors behind accidents and therefore promote safer driving behaviours.

The cameras have been used in some Toll vehicles operating in some parts of Australia for over 12 months but their use had, until recently, been excluded from Victoria, where they faced stiff driver and union opposition. However, the Fair Work Commission recently ruled in favour of Toll using the cameras in the state, thereby allowing the operator's line-haul vehicles fitted with the technology to enter Victoria.

Mr Kruger says communicating the intention behind the cameras is key to winning driver acceptance.

"We use it as a training tool and I think that's the message that needs to get through to people who are using this sort of technology – you don't use it as a stick," he said.

"I think that was the fear for a number of drivers when we introduced this technology – we could see what was causing incidents and what they [the drivers] might have been doing at the time of the incident. They were concerned that we were going to use it as a stick."

Mr Kruger says drivers are becoming more accepting of the technology and that it's having a very positive effect on vehicle safety.

"It's absolutely had an impact on incident rates with our vehicles," he says.

"You have to use it as a tool to support training, to support driver behaviour improvement, and we've done that and won the confidence of our people."

"I frankly have not had one call from either the union or from a driver expressing a concern about how we're using that technology and I'm sure if there was an issue out there I would have heard about it. I understand why they [the drivers] get nervous, but it's up to us to prove to them that we'll use it the right way."

Click here to read the full interview with Mr Kruger.

Toll: maintenance only part of the picture

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