Waste haulers working in big cities have to contend with larger populations, increased traffic and busier routes. These factors, in addition to normal on-the-job hazards such as driver fatigue and equipment failure, can put both waste collectors’ and pedestrians’ safety at an increased risk.
With these issues in mind, panelists at WasteExpo 2018 talked about how haulers can work safer during the Best Practices for City Collection session.
Julia Kite, director of strategic initiatives at the New York State Department of Transportation, said that New York City’s Vision Zero program has been instrumental in helping cut down on waste-related driving injuries and fatalities.
Vision Zero, which was initially implemented in Sweden, was adopted in New York City under Mayor Bill de Blasio four years ago. According to Kite, the program has been able to be successful by changing the way people relate to collection accidents.
“What Vision Zero means is that we change the way that we think about crashes on our city streets,” Kite said. “Vision Zero first states that deaths and serious injuries on the road are preventable, and that the number of deaths that are acceptable is zero. I know that can be a lot to wrap your head around, how do you get to zero people dying in your city? But when you think about it, if we understand the reasons crashes happen and find factors we can prevent, it becomes more feasible.”
Vision Zero is a multidisciplinary policy that has focused on improving safety through several shifts in policy, including: expanded enforcement against dangerous moving violations like speeding and failure to yield to pedestrians, new street designs to facilitate better safety, public outreach and communication campaigns to better educate citizens, and harsher legislative penalties for dangerous drivers.
Since the Vision Zero initiative was adopted, Kite said that accidents and fatalities have sharply fallen in the city.
“In the four years that Vision Zero has been the official policy in New York City, we’ve made phenomenal progress,” Kite said. “While the rest of the country has seen an increase in road deaths, particularly in pedestrian deaths, New York City has found a 28 percent decline in all fatalities and a 45 percent decline in pedestrian fatalities. So, what we’re doing is working, and more importantly, we know other cities can do this, too.”
Liam Tanelli, chief financial officer at Newark, New Jersey-based Voyager Trucking Corp., said that part of improving collection safety involves dealing with the systemic employee shortage issue. He noted that as of 2017, the waste industry was down 50,000 drivers.
“I think the last two years, the national driver shortage has been getting louder and louder, and I think everyone in the industry has felt the pain of that. I think this has a direct correlation between safety and safety procedures,” Tanelli said.
The reality of this shortage is that waste companies are more liable to hire drivers with a spotty driving record to keep up with demand. To help mitigate this issue, Tanelli said that Voyager has placed a renewed emphasis on driver training. His company has also reinvested in equipment such as disc brakes, tire monitoring systems and reverse flood lights to help cut down on preventable accidents.
John Sliwicki, vice president of risk management at Morton Grove, Illinois-based Lakeshore Recycling Systems, said to change the narrative on safety in the waste collection industry, comprehensive coordination is going to need to happen between the industry, government associations and the public at large.
“I think everyone here gets it, we can put in [onboard cameras], we can do data analysis, we can do regression modeling, but collaborations and industry outreach is really key to getting the issue of safety, crashes and fatalities addressed,” Sliwicki said.
WasteExpo 2018 was April 23-26 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.