10.3 Seat Belts, Restraints and Getting In and Out Safely

10.3 Seat Belts, Restraints and Getting In and Out Safely

Quick Summary / Key Rule: Seat belts are the most effective device for protecting occupants in a crash. They save lives and prevent injury, and they must always be worn properly and adjusted tightly. The driver carries responsibility for restraint compliance in the vehicle.

Professional drivers are among the worst offenders for short-trip non-compliance — the yard shunt, the reverse onto the dock, the two-hundred-metre repositioning move. Those are exactly the movements where an unbelted occupant is thrown against a windscreen or a bulkhead.

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Why the Seat Belt Matters More in a Heavy Vehicle

The high seating position that makes a truck cab safe in most impacts becomes a liability in two specific crash types:

• Rollover. A truck rollover is a relatively slow event, but an unbelted driver is thrown across the cab and frequently out of the door or windscreen, ending up underneath the vehicle. Belted drivers routinely walk away from rollovers that kill unbelted ones.
• Front underrun. In a frontal impact the driver sits directly above the point of intrusion, with very little crush structure ahead. The belt is what keeps you in the seat, behind the wheel, and out of the intruding structure.

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The Rules

A belt that is worn but slack, worn under the arm, or worn with the sash behind the back provides a fraction of its designed protection. "Adjusted tightly" is part of the legal requirement, not a comfort suggestion.

Test-vehicle requirement

There is a heavy-vehicle-specific seat belt rule worth knowing for licensing: all heavy vehicles presented for a Heavy Vehicle Driving Test (except buses and coaches used for the test) must have a complying — approved and in working condition — lap-sash retractable seatbelt fitted to the front left passenger seat, for the safety of the testing officer. A vehicle without one will not be accepted for the test.

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Getting Into and Out of a Heavy Vehicle: Three Points of Contact

Falls from vehicles are one of the largest sources of serious injury in the road freight industry, and they happen at a standstill in a depot rather than at speed on a highway. A truck cab floor sits well above head height for someone standing beside it, and the ground below is frequently wet, oily or uneven.

The three points of contact rule: when climbing into or out of a cab, or onto or off a trailer deck, always maintain three points of contact with the vehicle — two hands and one foot, or two feet and one hand — at all times.

Practical application:

1. Face the vehicle on the way down. Climbing down facing outwards, the way you would walk down stairs, removes your ability to grab a handhold if a foot slips.
2. Use the handholds provided, not the steering wheel, the door frame edge or the mirror arm. The steering wheel moves; the door can swing.
3. Never jump down from the cab or from a trailer deck. A jump from cab height with a body loading of a laden driver produces knee, ankle and spinal injuries that end careers, and it is the single most common cause of heavy-vehicle workplace injury claims.
4. Check the step surfaces. Diesel, hydraulic oil and mud on a steel step in the rain create a genuinely frictionless surface.
5. Do not carry anything on the way down. A hand holding a clipboard, a phone or a thermos is a hand that is not on a handhold.

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Doors and Getting Out Onto a Roadway

You have specific legal responsibilities when opening a vehicle door on a roadway. You must not open a door if you are likely to cause danger to any person, and before getting out you must check your mirrors and blind spots for pedestrians, bicycles or other road users.

For a heavy vehicle parked on a kerbside delivery, this matters twice over:

• The driver's door swings out into the traffic lane at a height that puts it directly in a cyclist's head-and-shoulder line.
• Stepping down places you in the traffic lane facing the vehicle, with your back to approaching traffic and no line of sight.

Where possible, exit on the kerb side, and where you must exit on the traffic side, look before you open, open only as far as you need, and step down facing the vehicle.

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Worked Scenario: The Depot Shunt

A driver needs to move a prime mover 60 metres across a depot yard to a different dock.

• The temptation: it is a 30-second move on private property, so the belt seems pointless.
• The reality: yard surfaces are uneven, visibility is poor, and reversing collisions with fixed structures happen at exactly this kind of speed. An unbelted driver in a low-speed impact still travels across the cab.
• The rule: seat belts must always be worn properly and adjusted tightly. Not "on public roads", not "above 40 km/h".
• The exit: the driver climbs down facing the cab, three points of contact, both hands free, onto a wet steel step. A jump from that step onto oily concrete is how a driver takes six weeks off work with a fractured calcaneus.