NRSPP is proud to announce that Dr Sarah Jones, General Manager Road Transport Safety and Compliance, from Toll Group is the winner of NRSPP’s ARSC2018 Best Paper with Implications for Improving Workplace Road Safety. Dr Jones’s winning paper was titled “On-road and driver fatalities at Toll Group: what data reveals about risk and opportunity in our pursuit of zero.”
The Australasian Road Safety Conference 2018 (ARSC2018) took place on 3-5 October in Sydney with the theme “Towards Zero: Making it Happen!” with over 700 attendees ranging from industry, policy, regulators, practitioners, world experts, and the list goes on.
The National Road Safety Partnership Program (NRSPP) has been the sponsor of the award for Best Paper with Implications for Improving Workplace Road Safety since its introduction in 2016. The winner receives a $1000 cash prize, a certificate and the opportunity for the winner to develop their paper into an NRSPP Thought Leadership Piece and Webinar.
The theme of this year’s ARSC particularly resonated with Dr Jones and her team as Toll Group’s goal is to be incident and injury free through an unrelenting safety obsession.
Toll Group is the Asia-Pacific region’s largest provider of transport and logistics services, operating across 1,200 locations in more than 50 countries. In 2017 Toll undertook an analysis of all ‘on-road and driver fatalities’ that occurred in its operations between 1 July 2007 and 31 December 2016. The research suggests that targeted speed and fatigue policy interventions have a tangible impact on fatalities. The research also identified areas that need greater attention to drive down the incidence of fatalities including:
- Greater light vehicle driver education on how to share the road safely with trucks
- Education, training and risk management for subcontractors in the supply chain
- Cross-sectoral initiatives to address suicide by truck
- A driver fitness for duty standard similar to the standards used in rail, maritime and aviation.
Toll is working with the road safety community (including the National Road Safety Partnership Program), Regulators, medical consultants and state and national transport authorities on initiatives that speak to the issues uncovered by Toll’s research.
NRSPP would also like to make special mention of the paper Safe Vehicles: Is our own House in Order by the NSW Police Traffic and Highway Patrol Command. The simple project has far-reaching implications and can be applied by any organisation. The project represents a health check on the safety of vehicles owned and driven by those civilian and police employees and their families, as well as their awareness of the safer vehicle pillar.
