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On Sunday, November 10^th, the Idaho Statesmen published, “Cars overtaking bikes big cause of cyclist deaths,” a story detailing the growing safety concerns for vehicles overtaking cyclists. According to the author, David Lightman, in 2017, 806 cyclists died in incidents with vehicles nationwide, and in 2018 the death toll jumped to 857. “Three cyclists died in crashes with motor vehicles in Idaho in 2017, according to the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD). Also that year, a cyclist was injured in a crash every 40 hours ITD said,” Lightman wrote in his article.

In Part 1: An Increasingly Distracted World, you were asked to confront your ‘familiarity’ with your environments. A familiarity may cause any one of us to relax and lower our defenses while working with or around heavy-duty machinery. Reflecting on these three questions can help peel back the layers:

Sharing the roadways with buses, delivery trucks, large commercial vehicles, and more are members of the traveling public as they go about their daily routines. Regardless of the mode of transportation, being safe on the road is a responsibility shared by all.

From a cost versus benefit perspective, it is understood that value must justify the cost for leadership buy-in. These decisions are made regardless of the underlying motivation, which has consistently caused a disconnect between the safety technology industry and adoption.

You’ve just invested a large sum of money on a new piece of equipment, and now you have to consider paying out more for optional safety equipment. That follow-on purchase can be a hard pill to swallow, but there are some very good reasons to take your medicine.

Americans tend to think of Sweden as a snow-covered mecca in northern Europe—a place where people cross country ski to work, wear cable-knit sweaters, and eat lots of meatballs. But the Swedish people have made many weighty contributions to the global society—everything from the centigrade thermometer (Anders Celsius was Swedish) to dynamite (Alfred Nobel), the universal pipe wrench, the zipper, and cars such as Volvo. Vision Zero is among their latest contributions, and it reflects a unique point of view on road safety.

In 1799, French army engineers discovered the Rosetta Stone, a slab of rock that created a revolution in archeology by helping Egyptologists crack the code of hieroglyphics. Today’s modern fleet owners, insurers, and government officials would love to come across a similar tell all to help them crack the code of vehicle crash costs. Instead, they are faced with a dizzying array of agencies, measurement standards, and definitions that make it nearly impossible to answer a critical, but complex, question: How much, on average, does it cost when the operator of a fleet vehicle gets into a crash with another person or thing?

Earlier this month our PRECO team went to India to showcase at this year’s International Mining & Machinery Exhibition (IMME). The exhibition is a four-day event held at the New Town Eco Park in Kolkata, India, with over 300 exhibitors, 6,000-plus business visitors, and over 11 countries representing including Australia, China, and Italy.

The occurrence of accidents happening with equipment whose radar based object detection systems have been disabled are on the rise. Though many workers and operators feel they can rely on passive equipment like camera/monitor combos and mirrors to guide them on a worksite active systems, like PRECO’s PreView® Radar technology, is the only viable way for an operator to be truly aware of their surroundings.

With deadlines to meet, customers to please, and budgets that can often be tight at best, safety can easily take a back seat to cheaper, faster short-cuts. Anyone who has ever dealt with the aftermath of an on-the-job accident or fatality will be the first to attest that not only should safety be in the front seat, it should be the driver.