Why blaming the driver solves nothing
Why blaming the driver solves nothing
Too often, heavy-vehicle crashes are blamed on drivers. NEIL FRANKLIN argues that proper investigations expose deeper organisational failures that shape behaviour and undermine safety across Africa’s freight corridors every day.
You no longer need a root cause analysis specialist with extensive investigative experience to explain the causes of heavy-duty road incidents. Just ask your favourite AI tool, as I did out of curiosity while preparing this article.
The first line quickly returned to me was: “Dangerous goods accidents in Africa are primarily driven by human error, which accounts for over 80% of road freight incidents. The most common root causes stem from reckless driving, fatigue, unroadworthy vehicles, and severely degraded road infrastructure.”
The easy answer
It’s AI… surely it must be correct? Yet I would put money on the fact that few of the people who published the “facts” gathered by the Google AI tool have sat in the passenger seat of a heavy-duty vehicle transporting goods more than 3,000km across the continent. Without that experience, it is difficult to understand the real “human factors” at play, let alone the appalling condition of some roads and the unpredictable actions of third parties, including people and animals.
There are two major problems with the AI information I received. First, it places almost all the focus on drivers. If human error supposedly accounts for 80% of incidents, why should a company focus on – or justify spending money on – anything else? The drivers are the problem, right?
Second, the factors listed are not root causes. This reflects a long-standing industry problem: investigations often stop too early, before the systemic and organisational failures behind an incident have been identified and addressed.
As a South African safety professional, I know we have a certain “pioneer” from the 1930s to thank for embedding a similar paradigm in our textbooks, by attributing 88% of industrial accidents to unsafe acts. Once again, the human was blamed. We are still struggling to shake off that thinking and persuade employers not to conclude immediately that an incident was caused by a “stupid” or negligent employee.
What proper investigations reveal
The problem with a thorough investigation is that it is designed to expose organisational, systemic or leadership failures. Employers and – in the freight industry – operators, consignors and agents may not want those weaknesses uncovered. It is a serious Catch-22; we genuinely want incidents prevented, but we are not always comfortable exposing failures in areas for which we are accountable.
Before I am misunderstood, I must acknowledge that there are serious behavioural problems both in workplaces and behind the wheel. We regularly witness dreadful driving or see it captured on dashcams. However, this is not representative of the entire industry. Human error and human factors are real, but they are not root causes. Three investigations illustrate the distinction.
Three incidents, three deeper causes
In the first case, a driver left Mpumalanga for KwaZulu-Natal after loading. Shortly after passing through a major toll plaza on the N3, he fell asleep, drifted onto the grass and overturned the vehicle. This clearly involved a human factor, but “nodding off and landing on the grass” was only the direct cause; the investigation had to establish why he was in that condition.
It was found that he had been held in the loading queue for a lengthy period because of the consignor’s inefficient system. His sleep had been severely disrupted, yet he was instructed to depart so the delivery would arrive on time. The root causes were an inefficient loading system and poor leadership that failed to allow him adequate rest.
In the second case, a driver left Johannesburg at about 4am, heading towards Middelburg. While travelling on a busy national highway through thick fog, he drove into the rear of a stationary truck.
Human error, right? Surely, he could have pulled over before entering the fog and decided to wait it out. That sounds reasonable until the wider context is considered. The delivery had been outsourced: on-time-in-full (OTIF) was a key contractual measure and the load was time-sensitive for the mine receiving it. Several pressures were therefore driving the employee’s behaviour and influencing his decision to continue.
It should be noted that fog on certain routes is highly predictable during certain periods. If the hazard is foreseeable, operators and clients should plan for it rather than leaving the driver to choose between safety and a delivery target.
In the third case, a driver was en route to a mine with a fully loaded vehicle. The road was in very poor condition and, passing through a densely populated area. a motorcycle suddenly entered his path from the side of the road.
The driver instinctively swerved, causing the truck to roll onto its side. The incident resulted in a spillage, injury to the driver and a road closure.
The sharp steering input was certainly a human action, but it was instinctive. There was no meaningful root cause in the movement itself. Sadly, we were unable to interview the motorcycle rider and understand the behaviour that triggered the incident.
A worsening operating environment
The risk profile of road transport in Africa is deteriorating. There is little indication of a major shift to rail, while approximately 80% of freight on the continent is transported by road. Africa has the world’s poorest road safety performance despite accounting for only 3% of registered vehicles globally.
Truck routes are becoming longer, while many roads are deteriorating. One border crossing was recently described in an article as “constipated”. Safe, properly equipped truck stops remain scarce, while third parties and animals create additional hazards.
All this places greater pressure on the person behind the wheel, who must navigate the journey safely, often while carrying dangerous goods. The business case for investing in drivers, systems, tools and technology has therefore never been stronger. Improving competence, comfort, wellbeing and alertness is not an optional extra. It is part of controlling the wider system in which drivers operate.
Give drivers a better chance
We should not be surprised when future road incidents across the continent are attributed to human error or human factors. Human beings will inevitably remain involved in complex transport operations. However, those labels are not root causes; they are starting points for proper investigation.
The real causes must be uncovered and addressed, whether they lie in loading delays, contractual pressure, poor journey planning, inadequate infrastructure, weak leadership or flawed operational systems. Only then can the industry prevent recurrence and give the human beings behind the wheel a better chance of completing every journey safely.
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