South Australian Road Transport Association (SARTA) has urged motorists to show trucks more respect according to an article on Fullyloaded.com.au. The article highlights the fact that motorists often drive recklessly around trucks, not realizing that trucks cannot move as fast as other motor vehicles do.
The article says that truck drivers in South Australia are under constant attack from reckless drivers who have a lack of truck awareness. This lack of awareness about how trucks operate is leading to dangerous driving around trucks, endangering both truck drivers and other road users.
SARTA is frustrated at the blame that truckies receive for road accidents when heavy vehicles are only responsible for a quarter of the fatal crashes that occur involving other road users.
Read what the post on Fullyloaded.com.au goes on to state:
South Australian Road Transport Association (SARTA) Executive Director Steve Shearer says he is sick of hearing about the industry being blamed for accidents when figures show heavy vehicles are responsible for just one in four fatal crashes involving a passenger vehicle, pedestrian or cyclist.
He is calling on motorists to take their time, saying they need to show more respect around trucks.
Shearer hopes a new road safety campaign called Share the Road, which aims to educate drivers how to safely overtake trucks and maintain travelling distances, will work.
Read more: http://www.fullyloaded.com.au/industry-news/articleid/83417.aspx
SARTA goes on to explain that seventy seven people died on South Australian roads in the last five years due to car/truck accidents. Of those who died in these accidents, fifty eight could still be alive today if motorists hadn’t made bad decisions around trucks.
The majority of truck drivers are responsible and abide by the rules of the road but the occasional “bad apple” can give the entire industry a bad name as well as incorrect finger pointing at truckies when accidents are caused by motorists.
That is why educating the public about safe driving techniques around trucks especially because of the impatience and frustration they display when in the vicinity of trucks, this impatience is what leads to bad driving decisions and crashes.
Read what the article on Fullyloaded.com.au went on to state:
“That’s a lot of people and it’s a lot of people who did things either out of frustration or ignorance about the amount of space that trucks need and how long it takes to overpass a driver.
“You’d think it’d be pretty obvious that trucks are longer so they take longer to pass but it’s amazing the number of people who get out there who do not realise how hard it’d be to pass a truck.”
During his 20-year-long career in the transport industry, Shearer says the trend of media reporting on trucks has changed for the better.
Where previously the truck would have been portrayed to be at fault, the media is nowadays making more accurate reports, he says.
“The poor old truck driver is not suffering the added stress of getting the public blame for something they haven’t done. For decades it’s been very frustrating that the reporting blames the truck driver all the time,” he says.
Read more: http://www.fullyloaded.com.au/industry-news/articleid/83417.aspx
