Safety Update

Safety Update: Road Safey Is On Everyone's Mind

Earlier this week Alberta Motor Transport Association (AMTA) released the first online Professional Driver Improvement Course (PDIC) to address the continuing issue of "Road Safety". Road safety has long been a serious issue across Canada and continues to be top of mind among industry and government.

Vehicle collisions remain the number one cause of death in Alberta workplaces, and are responsible for more than 30 per cent of all fatalities. According to Don MacKenzie, Partnerships consultant at Alberta Employment and Immigration, driving-related incidents are the most common cause of workplace deaths in Alberta. "These incidents normally make up about a quarter of the cases investigated," he said. (OHS Magazine January 2009).

In 2008, there were 410 traffic fatalities and 22,015 traffic injuries in Alberta. The most frequently identified driver actions contributing to the 158,055 traffic collisions were: following too closely, running off the road and left turn across path (source: Government of Alberta Transportation Collision Statistics 2008).

The oil & gas industry is actively promoting road safety awareness. The roads in the Fort McMurray area and between Fort McMurray and Edmonton are among the most congested and heavily travelled in the province. The forestry industry is similarly active in stressing the importance of road safety among its workers. Industry truck drivers make thousands of trips annually, transporting logs from the harvest site to the mills. The industry estimates that more than 2,200 logging trucks travel over 90 million km each year in Alberta and most of these trips are made during the winter months.

Partnerships in Health and Safety has revised the Certificate of Recognition audit to increase awareness of the importance of safe driving. To keep road safety in the forefront, they are adding references to driving in the auditor guidelines and also a Partnerships standard to include road safety in COR health and safety program building courses.

With all of this in mind and considering financial pressures in the market and continuous time constraints and lack of resources, AMTA in partnership with eCompliance, converted its 1 day classroom based Professional Driver Improvement Course (PDIC) into a online course.

AMTA's Professional Driver Improvement Course looks at the issues encountered by driving professionals. PDIC is designed to sharpen a driver's skill through a structured look at experiences and problem areas shared by all drivers such as bad weather, winter roads, pressures of time and distance. It focuses on drivers' expectations and analysis of dangerous situations.

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