Drivers' Pay & Safety * Australia - Industry snubs safe rates

Report found a link between low rates of pay and safety

Canberra,Australia -Supply Chain, by Brad Gardner and Anna Game-Lopata -February 18, 2011: -- Australia’s largest transport and logistics carrier has joined the nation’s peak Logistics body to reject a government proposal aimed at reforming trucking remuneration... The Australian Logistics Council (ALC) has expressed concern about the government's Safe Rates Safe Roads Directions Paper to institute yet another layer of regulation upon the industry... Meanwhile the Toll Group has finally adopted a position on safe rates, which the Federal Government says will ensure employees and owner-drivers are paid enough to make ends meet. The transport and logistics giant claims owner-drivers will be worse off if a minimum rate is introduced... A 2008 National Transport Commission (NTC) report found a link between low rates of pay and safety. It argued for a minimum rate to be set, but Toll claims government intervention is not the answer. Instead, Toll wants the voluntary National Logistics Council Safety Code used... An Allen Consulting Group report – paid for by Toll – says the code is effective because it addresses health and safety, scheduling, time slot management, loading practices and driver fatigue management... According to Toll, increased regulation will only increase compliance costs and render sub-contractors uncompetitive... The Government has proposed a tribunal to rule on pay matters, and has suggested establishing it within Fair Work Australia. Under one of the three proposals, the tribunal will be able to apply employee-like conditions to owner-drivers... Toll believes a tribunal that treats owner-drivers similarly to employees will reduce the attractiveness of sub-contractors because there will be no distinction between them and company drivers... (Photo from t1.gstatic)

* USA - Driver Pay Significantly Affects Safety

(Video from YouTube, by Video from Youtube by THEBRAMASTA -1 Jan 2009: Triple Road Train Going to fuel up)
Washington,DC,USA -IMT, by Katrina C. Arabe/Sources: Paying for Safety: An Economic Analysis of the Effect of Compensation on Truck Driver Safety, by Michael H. Belzer, Daniel Rodriguez and Stanley A. Sedo -Originally published: December 12, 2002: -- According to a recent study, truck driver pay is a very good predictor of safe driving. In fact, the relationship is strong—with pay increases leading to performance improvements...  Truck driver pay has a very strong influence on driver safety, says a new study co-sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. According to the study, which was headed by Wayne State University professor Michael H. Belzer, higher pay yields better safety performance. The report, entitled "Paying for Safety," asserts that driver pay is an important predictor of safe vehicle operation...  In fact, the researchers, concluded, "Conservatively we can say that the relationship between safety and pay probably is better than 2:1" ... To demonstrate the link between driver pay and safety, the researchers looked at three different data sets. The first set came from The National Survey of Driver Wages, referred to as Signpost, which studied 198 truckload (TL) firms in 1998. The second set of data looked at 11,540 drivers employed by the truckload carrier, J.B. Hunt, which increased wages to reduce crashes and turnover. Finally, the third data set was gathered by researchers from the University of Michigan Trucking Industry Program (UMTIP), which randomly surveyed drivers in truck stops in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin...  The Signpost data shows that driver compensation and truck crashes are inversely related. This means that for every percentage increase in compensation, there is a corresponding percentage decrease in crashes. In fact, the relationship is almost 1:1 with every 10% gain in average driver compensation, which includes mileage rate, unpaid time, anticipated annual raise, safety bonus, health insurance and life insurance, accompanied by a 9.2% decrease in crashes for the average carrier...  The second set of data, which looked at J.B. Hunt drivers over two 13-month periods, also supports the assertion that driver pay influences driver performance. This study discovered that, at the mean, if a driver is given a base pay rate that is 10% higher than standard, then the driver will be 34% less likely to crash than the average truck operator. In addition, for every 10% pay raise that a driver receives, his or her crash risk will decrease by 6%. Pay raises, however, are not the only factor in this performance jump since the drivers who get pay hikes tend to be safer than others...  The third data set included random interviews of 1,000 over-the-road drivers, but the analysis was limited to "employee" drivers who are paid a mileage rate. Findings reveal that a 10% hike in mileage rate from $0.295 to $0.324 leads to a 21% reduction in the probability of a crash from 13.8% to 10.86%. In addition, increasing the number of paid days off has a similar, albeit less significant, effect on estimated crash risk. A 10% increase in the number of paid days off results in a 7% decrease in the crash risk from 13.8% to 12.79%...   The UMTIP data also revealed that drivers are less likely to work long hours if they are paid more. This effect kicks in after a certain level of pay: For example, at 20 cents per mile, drivers, on average, will want to work 48.9 hours to meet target earnings. At 25 cents per mile, they will choose to increase works hours to 60.1 while at 31.4 cents per mile, they will be motivated to work 65.1 hours. The trend reverses above this pay level. When they are paid 37.8 cents per mile, on average, they will prefer to work for 59.9 hours. At 42.1 cents per mile, the figure drops to 50.6 hours...  Overall, the study clearly demonstrates that higher pay leads to safer driving...

* Will Safe Rates work?

Sidney,NSW,Australia -Transport and Logistic News -22 Feb 2011: -- The Australian Government should compare the safety benefits and costs of safe rates against other road safety measures before going ahead with the concept, the chief executive of the Australian Trucking Association, Stuart St Clair, said...   Mr St Clair was releasing the ATA’s submission in response to the government’s Safe Rates Directions paper. The directions paper examines three models for regulating payment rates in the industry further, on the grounds that this would improve truck safety...   Mr St Clair said the Government needed to prepare a thorough regulatory impact statement into safe rates, and evaluate its costs and safety benefits against allocating similar resources to other road safety measures...  Mr St Clair said the government also needed to ensure that the industry’s existing safety regulations are rigorously applied, with an emphasis on the chain of responsibility regulations. Under chain of responsibility, trucking companies and the industry’s customers can be held to account if their actions, inactions or demands lead to unsafe situations on the road...