ICFTU OnLine…
183/980907/LD

Brussels, September 7 1998 (ICFTU OnLine): Fabrice smiles wryly when, as the holidays approach, the public is bombarded with road safety advice: "do not overload your car", "take a rest every two hours", "be careful when driving at night"... Fabrice, the friendly truck driver who changed his name for the purposes of his recent interview in the Belgian daily Le Soir (1) admits to having driven 6,000 km in six days in his truck, to having doctored the counters that record his mileage and the number of hours of driving, and to driving with twice the authorised load.

"One evening, on the Paris motorway, I fell asleep" Fabrice recalls. "It was just a few seconds, I don’t know how many, but when I came to, I was less than 10 centimetres from the lorry in front of me. It was the third time in less than an hour that I had dozed off. I telephoned my boss and asked him to replace me. He refused and I had to carry on. Another time, I woke up to see flames coming up the side of my lorry. I was driving up against the central barrier."

Stories such as this are all too familiar to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the ITF. Many of them end in tragedy, which is why the Federation has decided to sound the alarm. On September 8 it organised an International Day of Action. From London to Nairobi and Rio de Janeiro to New Delhi, drivers sounded their horns en masse, there were convoys, rallies, demonstrations ... all aimed at raising public awareness.

A similar day of action took place in June last year. In response to the ITF’s appeal, the German transport workers’ unions blocked the French and Polish borders, the French and Spanish unions slowed down the traffic between their two countries, in Argentina, the unions from the Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) organised a 1,000 km rally for 3,000 lorries, and in Bangladesh the lorry drivers union, after a week of action, won a new law making it compulsory to provide a second driver for journeys of more than eight hours.

"Fatigue kills", the provocative slogan chosen by the international federation for its day of action on September 8, is aimed at sending a stark but very true message to governments, employers, public opinion and truck drivers alike. The campaign’s aims are: to reduce working time for all professional drivers, the enforcement of regulations on working time, decent resting places for drivers, an end to long waits at border posts and a pay package that takes waiting time into account.

The London-based international also wants to see a change in attitudes. Because while fatigue kills, the inertia of the decision-makers is just as much to blame. The International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention no. 153, adopted in 1979, has so far been ratified by only seven countries (2). It sets the maximum working week for road transport drivers at 48 hours, demands breaks from continual driving every four hours, and a daily rest of eight consecutive hours at least. Yet most governments are reluctant to enforce these relatively modest targets. "Even the European Union, which usually is never hesitant to proclaim high moral ambitions, maintains an embarrassed silence on the question of compliance with Convention 153" reveals the ITF. As for the employers, they firmly put the breaks on whenever there is a proposal to improve working conditions. Their main concern is to save time, to keep up with the competition. Bonuses are paid to encourage workers to drive faster and false records are kept in log books to hide the every more deadly pace of work.

Finally, notes the ITF "our campaign is also aimed at truck drivers who may not be aware of their rights and the regulations in force". Or those who simply over-estimate their own stamina. Steve, a 22-year-old truck driver, recently complained (1) about the restrictions of having to observe rest periods. "There is nothing to stop car drivers driving 2,000 kilometres in one go to get to their holiday destination. Everyone has different physical limitations, but we are professionals and we know our own limits better than any minister who has never set foot in a lorry" grumbles Steve at the wheel of his 40 tonne truck, claiming all the while that of course he respects the rules.

But the rules are often broken. "We regularly receive reports of professional drivers driving over 60 hours a week in almost every country of the world, irrespective of local regulations. We have even come across cases of drivers driving 100 hours a week" explains the ITF. And there’s a rising death toll as a result. Every year in the United States 5,000 deaths and 100,000 injuries are recorded following accidents with heavy goods vehicles. It is estimated that one third are caused by driver fatigue. In Spain, a report about to be published by the Ministry for Social Development reveals that in 1996 some 341 coach and lorry drivers were killed on the roads while working. Another 5,921 were injured. Such figures in theory place driving among the most dangerous professions in Spain, well ahead of mining and building. Only in theory however, because in Spain road deaths are not included in the figures for occupational accidents and are therefore not the subject of the same surveys and statistics.

In Turkey in 1997, 101 people died and 250 were wounded in ten coach accidents attributed partly to fatigue. In France, the inter-ministerial delegate for road safety, Isabelle Massin, revealed recently that "two thirds of fatal occupational accidents are road accidents" (3).

At Stanford University in the United States, researchers studied 80 drivers for one normal working week. The drivers were linked up to detectors and video recorders in order to determine moments of fatigue. The results of this survey, published in 1997, speak volumes. Of the 80 drivers, 45 dozed off for at least one six-minute period while driving, while 10 actually fell asleep at the wheel. A study of Australian drivers showed that the behaviour of a person who has been awake for 18 hours is just as disturbed as some who has a blood-alcohol level of 0.05. And drivers who drive round the clock are in as bad a state as someone with a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 who would legally lose their driving licence.

Despite all this, employers still demand more of their drivers. "Time is always the boss" as one South African truck driver put it. "If you rest too much, you are regarded as a bad driver". Bill Bettner, a truck driver from Illinois, knows the problem. In May he won the court case he began two years ago against his employer, Daymark Foods. The company had sacked him for refusing to drive for longer than the legal time limit. Last month another trial was due to open in the Australian town of Victoria, against Don Watson Transport. One of their drivers caused an accident which resulted in the death of his passenger. The inquiry revealed that in the four weeks preceding the accident, the driver had worked an average of 17 hours a day.

Fatigue was also the cause of an accident last May in the south of Taiwan which killed nine people when a driver lost control of his lorry, hitting 12 vehicles which had slowed down in front of him following a minor accident. "Forced to break the regulations by their employer, two co-drivers had been driving continuously backwards and forwards between Spain and Holland for 12 days without stopping, with dozens of passengers on board on each journey. Not once did they stop for the legally-required daily rest period and they regularly exceeded the speed limit in order to meet their schedule" recounts the ITF. An accident was inevitable, says the Federation. When it finally happened, it killed 22 passengers. It was in 1995.

Three years on, and many victims later, little has changed.

Fabrice recalls his last long journey: Brussels-Basle-Frankfurt and back via Amsterdam, a total of 1,500 km in one journey. How do you keep going? asks the journalist from Le Soir. "You keep the window wide open, with the radio at full volume and a bottle of water ready to pour over your head to stop you falling asleep. The worst thing is the two circles of red light from the lorry ahead. With the rocking movement of the trailer, the lights become hypnotic." When Fabrice asks his employer for a rest day, the latter prefers to offer him a pay rise instead...

The ITF is planning a long term campaign. Listening to Fabrice’s story you realise just how much further there is to go along the road to safety. And you hold your breath...