Data differentiator Crickmay has found through its Logistics Monitoring System (LMS) that “36% of the total driving distance of all corridors in southern and eastern Africa is driven in a fatigued state”.
According to managing director Jayce Lane, “by fatigued, we mean the total distance travelled by a vehicle that has already been driving for four hours or more”.
Lane said confirmation of what has been suspected for some time, that long-distance drivers are overworked while behind the wheel, was reached after interaction with a transport client of Crickmay’s.
The client had started auditing subcontractors in response to a question about managing related road safety compliance.
“Their own internal audits revealed that one of the drivers of a subcontracted fleet had been on a truck for over 100 days.”
Lane added that on his own journeys, regularly travelling the N3 between Gauteng and Ethekwini, he had observed how trucks had regularly left the road and were being recovered with no apparent reason for the cause.
“It highlighted to me that fatigue management is not strongly implemented,” Lane said.
He emphasised that with Crickmay’s data on hand, aggregated through monitoring up to 80 000 heavy motor vehicles (HMVs) every day, on LMS, the extent of the tired-driver problem had been confirmed.
Lane is certainly not the first to point out that corridor drivers in the SADC region often go without sleep to satisfy tight cargo delivery deadlines.
Gavin Kelly of the Road Freight Association, and Mike Fitzmaurice, vice-president of the Southern African region of the AU’s Transport and Logistics Organisations, have both stressed on numerous occasions in the past that long-distance drivers face inhumane conditions on the road.
Generally speaking, drivers are cooped up in their cabins at disrupted border posts, required to stay awake so they don’t lose their place in the queue.
This morning it was reported from Mozambique that there was a 15-kilometre queue as a result of the post-election disturbance at the Ressano Garcia Border Post on the N4 Maputo Corridor.
According to online platform Canal Moz, some drivers operating ore tippers heading to the Matola bulk terminal at the Port of Maputo have been stuck in their trucks for up to a week after election protests resulted in border closure.
