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WA bringing Instruckta to bear on motorists truck safety

Transafe WA initiative aims to tackle critical need for increased education

 

Western Australia industry body Transafe WA is seeking to make its Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative (HVSI) public education initiative a reality.

This will be ‘Instruckta’ – a truck and customised semi-trailer which expands into a cutting-edge education space, and a search is on for sponsors.

The aim of Instruckta, due to be ready in November, is to travel to schools and community events around the state, engaging the gneral public with learning opportunities that utilise augmented and virtual reality.

Primary school-age children will also learn about truck drivers, what they do, and the size of trucks relative to them.

Transafe WA points out that four in five accidents involving cars and trucks in Australia are the fault of the car driver and in nearly all these instances it is the car driver that is most likely to be killed or seriously injured.

Accident and serious injury data demonstrates that Australians are unaware of how to share the roads safely with trucks.

And in states such as Western Australia, where truck movements are growing in number by the day, this lack of awareness has authorities concerned.

According to Transafe WA executive officer Ana Stachewicz, there is a critical need to educate current and future road users how to share the road safely with trucks in WA – something not currently being met in the state’s education system or road-safety strategy priorities.

Stachewicz adds that this issue is not confined to regional roads.

Between 2015 and 2019, half of the people killed or seriously injured in crashes involving at least one heavy vehicle were in the metropolitan area.


Trucks are very much a part of HVSI initiatives. Read about another one, here


“Our programming includes fun interactive, consequence driven games,” Stachewicz explains.

“We then build on these programs for secondary school age children and the community adding experiences that explore truck blind spots, overtaking and road courtesy.

“We’re taking road safety up a level in WA, and using the awesome technology available to us to put the general road user in the truck driver’s seat and generate behavioural change on our roads.”

While trucks account for just 10 percent of the vehicles registered in WA, they travel at least half of the more than two billion kilometres we clock up on our roads every year in tasks that support our economy and lifestyles.

“We may not realise it but we all depend on trucks. In such a vast and scarcely populated state they don’t just service major industries like mining, construction and agriculture, they stock shops and transport goods essential to our daily lives,” Stachewicz says.

Western Roads Federation (WRF) CEO Cam Dumesny says Instruckta is an exciting and necessary initiative in Western Australia, which is going to fill an enormous gap in road safety education.

“The state government of Western Australia has more than $2.39 billion committed to creating and upgrading roads around the state, to make our infrastructure safe for everyone,” Dumesny says.

“But this is only part of the solution. It’s our shared responsibility as the WA community – the trucking industry, all the industries that rely on us, the not-for-profit sector, government and every Western Australian on the road – to learn how to safely and confidently share the roads with heavy vehicles.”

 

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