As the legalization of marijuana in varied jurisdictions has created some level of legal acceptance and usage among the public, the consumption of the substance still causes impairment while operating a motor vehicle on U.S. roadways.
“When you look across the country, it's kind of a patchwork of what's legal, what's not legal, what's medical, what's not, what’s decriminalized, what's not,” explained Darrin Grondel. “The easy part for commercial vehicle operators is they know that they can't consume at all.”
Grondel, vice president of traffic safety and government relations for the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility, known as Responsibility.org, shared insights on the impact of marijuana usage on commercial vehicle drivers, an overview of different cannabis products in use today, and telltale signs that someone may be impaired during the Truckload Carriers Association’s recent Virtual Safety and Security Conference.
Responsibility.org is a nonprofit organization that promotes the education of making informed and responsible choices on alcohol and drug use, with an effort to eliminate impaired driving. Prior to joining Responsibility.org, Grondel worked as a trooper for the Washington State Patrol for 25 years. He was a captain of the state’s commercial vehicle division prior to retirement from the force.
Impact of impairment
“If you look nationwide, 36,000 people died in this country in 2019 in motor vehicle crashes,” Grondel advised. “And almost 11,000 people died due to impairment.” Impairment most often refers to when a driver is under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, but can also be caused by excessive drowsiness or fatigue.
While a number of organizations have made progress over the last several decades to admonish driving under the influence of alcohol, or drunk driving, Grondel expressed concern that there is almost a public indifference to “drugged” driving. This conclusion is derived from a recent survey conducted by the Governor’s Highway Safety Association and Responsibility.org.
Some of that indifference may come from those who do not understand or acknowledge that even prescription drugs can cause impairment. This is why, Grondel suggested, it is so important to stay educated on the effects and rally around communicating the impact of consuming any types of substances.
“People think, ‘Well, my doctor has prescribed this to me and it shouldn't be impairing to me,’ when in reality, it might be impairing your balance, coordination, depth perception, and reaction times,” Grondel said.
There is very little data on driving impairment involving other drugs besides alcohol, he added. The challenge with any drugs besides alcohol is that the testing availability and accuracy is a challenge – especially for roadside incidents.
Another concern is that the combination of different drugs taken together – referred to as poly-drug use – can create varied levels of impairment. Add to that, data on drivers under the influence of any substance are limited, Grondel explained.
“Almost three-quarters of drivers involved in fatal crashes, who tested positive for cannabis also had multiple substances in their system at the time of the crash,” Grondel said, based on a recent report by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HITDA). The breakdown of multiple substances used of that 75% includes 35% who tested positive for cannabis and alcohol, 29% tested positive for cannabis and other drugs, and 11% tested positive for all three categories – alcohol, cannabis and other drugs. “It's interesting people say, ‘I only use cannabis.’ Well, the data is actually showing that more people use cannabis in combination with multiple substances.”
“I would challenge you to look at this as impaired driving regardless of the substance,” Grondel said. “It is still impairing of a driver, and it impacts your commercial vehicle operations, either from previous drivers or from the public who crashes into your rigs.” He urged attendees to acknowledge they can have an impact on reducing impaired driving.
“Truck drivers log almost 432 billion miles annually,” Grondel said. “Truck driving is one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States, with 28.3 fatal injuries per 100,000 miles for full time workers in 2018.”
“Many of those crashes were not necessarily the fault of the commercial vehicle,” he added.
Overview of cannabis products available
The cannabis plant comprises 480 different chemical compounds. Many are familiar with Delta 9 – THC, which creates the psychoactive response in the brain responsible for the euphoria some experience when ingesting marijuana. Unlike alcohol, which is water soluble, the chemical compounds of cannabis are a lipid soluble. Because the brain is made up of fatty tissue, these chemical compounds can store in the brain and impact cognitive and physical movement.
“Since the brain is our whole function of our body, this is why it was so important to understand the impacts that it can have for anybody operating a motor vehicle, or even performing safety-related functions — forklifts or handling other types of equipment,” said Grondel.
Grondel explained the legalization of marijuana has made much stronger strains of the substance more readily available, and has expanded the consumption possibilities.
“It is actually much more dangerous because of the concentration levels that we're seeing in marijuana,” Grondel said. “We've seen marijuana go from 3 to 6% THC concentration, to almost 30% in flower and then to 93 to 94% concentration in some of the oils.”
“Those concentrations have a deep impact on the level of impairment,” he added.
Fleets and safety managers should be aware of the variety of methods with which someone could ingest marijuana. The traditional pulmonary method is done through smoking, vaporizing, dabbing and even inhalers.
Due to the commercialization of marijuana, many products can now be ingested through oral or digestive products, often referred to as edibles or drinkables.
“These are edible products from potato chips to gummy bears to chocolate bars,” Grondel said. “Anything you can put the product in you can actually put into an edible. They have capsules that they can use.”
“They may take a little longer to actually absorb and metabolize through the liver and get into the system before they may have an impact,” Grondel added.
A more recent trend has been the increased use of cannabidiol, more commonly known as CBD. This compound can be ingested a number of ways including gummies or suspended in liquid or droplet form consumed orally, or through dermal patches.
Those who use CBD products claim it addresses a variety of conditions such as pain relief or reducing anxiety. But, Grondel says there is no known evidence currently suggesting CBD helps alleviate these conditions.
He added that the use of transdermal patches for pain relief is also a concern because it may allow for transmission of the substance into the blood stream, which allows THC to store in the fats of the body. “Just to be aware that is an issue that has been raised and is of concern,” advised Grondel, of transdermal CBD patch use with commercial vehicle drivers.
There is only one product approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Epidiolex, which is used to treat epilepsy symptoms.
“There [are] no known benefits to taking CBD over the counter,” advised Grondel, based on information sited from Dr. Davy Smith, a physician and chief of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego. “That's up to the individual, but right now, there's no real empirical evidence to support those claims.”
Signs of impairment and establishing a safety culture
When it comes to commercial drivers, alcohol and marijuana are most often the substances used in combination with one another.
“Through good training and good follow-up, safety managers are able to check with their drivers on a frequent basis and make sure that their drivers are not using other substances while operating their company vehicles," said Grondel.
He suggested safety managers and fleets consider educating staff on telltale signs of impairment, which are organized into seven different drug categories. These categories are what law enforcement officers consider when assessing impairment for someone at a roadside traffic stop.
“The estimated drug effects vary based on the type if smoked oral edibles and those types of things,” said Grondel. “We're starting to learn more and more about those and how they actually metabolized in the body.”
He advised the estimated impact and duration of effects after smoking or ingesting THC can vary widely. For instance, an individual who smokes THC may see peak effects one to 30 minutes after the initial smoking, may have behavioral and psychological effects for three to five hours, and residual effects for up to 24 hours. With orally ingested THC, such as edibles, the peak effect may be anywhere from one to three hours after the initial eating, and the behavioral and residual effects are dose dependent with no clear timeline. Additional research is needed to understand all methods of ingestion and the effects, duration, and long-term impacts, added Grondel.
Grondel suggested a number of signs indicative of marijuana usage. He advised the following symptoms in combination may be a telltale sign someone is high:
- Pupil size and reaction to light
- Body temperature, muscle tone, and other indicators
- Marijuana odor may not be present, he added
When testing, Grondel said that some synthetic cannabinoids may not register on drug tests. In other words, if someone is displaying telltale signs but tests negative, they may still be under the influence of some type of substance.
Based on Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Section 382 requirements, all safety managers are required to have 60 minutes of alcohol and 60 minutes of drug training, advised Grondel. “In many respects, that timeframe is inadequate to train people in some of the issue around drug and alcohol awareness, especially today how it is changing dramatically across the board,” he said.
“With legalization efforts, does it give people kind of a false sense of safety? If you've legalized it, you've made it safer,” Grondel added.
Grondel suggested safety must be a priority at the government funding level as well, to make an impact on roadways. “Truly if safety is a value, what are the investments that we're making to support that?” advised Grondel.
“How do you help change culture? How do you improve safety?” Grondel said. “How do you make that where it's not just a slogan on the wall, but it's actually an attitude and the belief that we have that permeates an entire organization?”
Jeff Davis, vice president of safety for Napa River Insurance Services, has been on the insurance side of trucking since 1983, and a major red flag for him and other insurance providers is when there is a disconnect between a fleet’s safety and operations departments. From a Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) standpoint, commercial fleets who have that disconnect will likely have much worse CSA scores and are more prone to risk.
When it comes to taking on new fleet clients to insure, Davis and his team look for the companies that have active driver managers or dispatchers who remind drivers about pre-trip inspections and problem areas on the road.
“When they’ve got a strong co-pilot there it works, and we see that [business] all the way through,” Davis explained during an Open Deck session on risk mitigation during the Truckload Carriers Association’s recent Virtual Safety and Security Conference. “When we have a situation where we are not feeling it with a company, we come back and we report that to our underwriters, and usually those are the companies we will take a pass on. But if it’s a situation where the company realizes they have some issues and they want to do something to fix that, we look for opportunities where it’s ripe for improvement.”
Often, Davis noted, a fleet’s safety department doesn’t get involved until there is a problem, and it is the operations department—usually the driver manager or the dispatcher—that deals with drivers every day. He emphasized the importance of involving operations in the overall safety process.
Jeff Hopkins, vice president of safety, training, and risk management at Boyd Bros. Transportation Inc., explained that in order to bridge the gap between the two departments safety needs to be addressed from a bigger picture, productivity perspective.
“When you are not in compliance with regulations, then you lose productivity,” he said. “If you can stay ahead of that and make sure you relate [both] operations’ priorities and needs, then you can improve both the operations metrics and the safety metrics.”
Milton Van Horn, certified director of safety for Carrier One Inc., explained that because operations staff is typically on the front line with drivers, they promote the fleet’s safety message. He also stressed the importance of thoroughly training and educating internal staff.
When Davis looks at potential new business partnerships, he said he considers a fleet’s ongoing education efforts and whether the fleet has realistic expectations for its drivers. He also said it is important that fleets know how regulations apply to them.
“What we really want to see is that education, which shows that value is placed on hard work and what their drivers put up with every day,” Davis said. “We find that the companies with empathetic staff that know what [drivers] are putting up with, and look to help them on a day-to-day basis are the successful carriers.”
Onboarding and continuing education
For Carrier One, the driver education process doesn’t stop at the end of orientation, it’s a continuous effort, explained Van Horn. The carrier also makes sure its safety department is on call 24/7 to assist drivers as needed.
“When drivers have inquiries, there is someone at the safety department that those drivers can reach day or night to help address their issues,” Van Horn said. “It could be a driving issue, a safety issue, or it could be an electronic logging device issue, whatever it may be, someone in the safety department will have the right answer for them. If they don’t have the right answer for them, they are going to get it by calling or texting someone in operations for assistance. The education process is an ongoing process from the day you hire that driver until the day that driver leaves.”
Hopkins explained that Boyd Bros. emphasizes onboarding drivers into the company culture.
“This is where we stress the safety culture to them,” he said. “We’ve implemented a 60-day review process so that for any of our drivers coming onboard, we bring them back in regardless of experience level at the 60-day mark. We conduct reviews, see if there are any questions, we do a review with operations staff to make sure that from a service perspective everything is going the way it should.”
From an insurance underwriting perspective, Davis said orientation is that most important part of indoctrinating drivers into a fleet’s culture.
“A lot of the folks coming through your orientation have already been through every video,” Davis noted. “I really hate orientations where you start every video with the same thing everyone has already seen, and they don’t come away with that feeling that they have made a good choice.”
“I really like the programs that introduce the drivers to the different people they are going to be working for and really give them a sense that they landed at a place they want to call home,” he added. “That is a lot more meaningful than the programs we have seen out there.”
Load securement training
Last year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) cited 17,969 violations for no or improper load securement. Of those violations, FMCSA put 91.2%, or 16,389 carriers, out of service.
Load securement can be especially risky for drivers who are jumping on and off trailers multiple times to fasten loads. Besides the potential risks for injury, if flatbed cargo isn’t secured properly, the load is at risk of being damaged or lost during the transportation process.
Carrier One has several trailers staged in its yard and operations and safety managers walk drivers through step by step on how to secure those loads correctly, explained Van Horn.
“I watched drivers jump up and down off that trailer, so to speak, a dozen times, when they could stage all their equipment in advance and get up and down only once or twice—reducing the risk of falling off the trailer and injuring themselves,” Van Horn pointed out. “Teach them the proper way to stage all their securement equipment so they have the least number of events getting on and off that trailer. Once they get a system in place, they can secure it much quicker and they are not wearing themselves out before trying to drive for hours afterwards.”
When Boyd Bros. hires drivers with flatbed experience, the carrier offers a refresher on how it secures loads. Drivers are then given a written test and put through a hands-on evaluation to demonstrate their skills.
“We have a four-day class where we go in depth and talk about the techniques used, then we go outside and demonstrate with the class hands on, and then at the end of that period, they do a hands-on test. If they pass that, they are good to go,” explained Hopkins.
These types of training exercises are designed to give fleet managers the opportunity to see how drivers will function in real-world environments ahead of time.
“There are a lot of folks out there who think they can do open-deck, flatbed work, but once they get into it, they can’t cut it,” explained Davis. “It’s much more valuable to find that out in your yard than wait two trips into it and find out that you have somebody out there who is going to damage your freight or lose a piece of freight.”
From the insurance side of it, Davis said when insurers defend a claim in which cargo securement becomes an issue, they are often questioned as to what kind of training the driver had. And the fleets that don’t properly train their drivers will end up paying out much more in the long run.
"Give" - Google News
July 07, 2020 at 09:39PM
https://ift.tt/38DW3Ku
Do marijuana legalization efforts give a false sense of safety for commercial vehicle fleets? - Fleet Owner
"Give" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YqGX80
https://ift.tt/2YquBwx
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Do marijuana legalization efforts give a false sense of safety for commercial vehicle fleets? - Fleet Owner"
Post a Comment