The #EYESUPNZ roadshow kicked off in March, with the first two events in Auckland and Palmerston North selling out. With the roadshow heading to Dunedin and Christchurch in May, it’s clear industry sees the value in this initiative.
The #EYESUPNZ roadshow was launched at the TMC Trucking Industry Show last year (see New Zealand Trucking, February 2023). Spearheaded by NZI, Seeing Machines and AutoSense, the roadshow takes a different approach in equipping transport companies to tackle fatigue and distraction among drivers.
Hosted by motorsport champion Greg Murphy, neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis and road safety expert Kelly McLuckie, the sessions offer attendees insight into driving and the brain before breaking into interactive train-the-trainer toolbox sessions – providing attendees with a practical toolbox they can take away to train their own teams.
“The roadshow is aimed at the people managers, the ones who interact with the drivers but probably may not have had any professional development,” says Charles Dawson, CEO of Autosense.
“The industry talks about driver training, and senior leadership often has vast experience or qualifications, but there’s this hard-working group that has come through the ranks and is so important to the industry, which we need to invest in and develop. We’re looking to create that for them.
“We’re an industry under stress. We’re starting to understand the stressors, concerns and environmental factors our drivers deal with and how these affect their decision-making. When you look at the way the brain works and you start throwing fatigue, distraction and stress at the decisions people have to make, the quality of those decisions reduces,” Dawson says.
With the sessions prioritising actions and outcomes, McLuckie says the attendees “totally got it”. “The response was phenomenal. No one competes on safety, so the fact people from different companies could be operational competitors but collaborate and share their ideas and information around safety and wellbeing, was great. Fatigue and distraction are part of life and not easy to tackle.
“There was a buzz in the room, and even once it had ended, people continued talking and engaging. I think what struck most with the audience was the need for consistency; keeping the conversation alive and doing something with the information is key to making change.”
#EYESUPNZ heads to Dunedin on 11 May and Christchurch on 17 May. Visit eyesupnz.co.nz for tickets and more details.
Driving and the brain
“People love learning about their own brains – it’s about giving them that information in a useful way,” says Wallis.
“You essentially have four brains. They go from the bottom to the top. The first is the brain stem at the base of your head – your survival brain. It keeps your heart beating, keeps you breathing, and it’s also the home of fight, flight or freeze. The thing to remember is it’s in charge!
“Brain two is your motor-skill brain, your movement brain. If you only have survival and movement, brains one and two, you’re a reptile – that’s a reptilian brain.
“Brain three is the limbic system, often called the mammal brain, and it’s the home of emotions. Its obvious mammals have emotions.
“Brain four is the frontal cortex, the flash one… It’s the brain you have that your dog hasn’t. Only humans have brain four – it’s your higher intelligence, the ability to control your emotions, keep your shit together, plan for the future, understand consequences… the thinking and learning brain,” he explains.
“Driving is about the thinking and learning brain (four), and the movement and coordination brain (two). The younger you are as a driver, the more you are in the frontal cortex. Once those motor skills are fully consolidated in the brain, they get moved back to brain two.”
Fatigue
“Brain one, your survival brain, and brain four, where the flash stuff is, work like a set of scales moving in relation to each other. If your frontal cortex is to be up and active, then your brain stem needs to be nice and calm and have all its needs met. As soon as you’re tired or hungry, the brain stem is aroused – survival always takes precedence. It becomes hard to focus your attention and you start to correspondingly lose access to the parts of the brain that are going to keep you safe, assess consequences, predict people’s movements… All the stuff you need to drive starts to go offline the more fatigued you get,” Wallis explains.
Distraction
“Your brain doesn’t remember everything that happened, it makes a story. Of what you see, 93% is an illusion and prediction you’re creating, 7% can be attributed to actual light hitting your eyes, the novelty we are [unconsciously] looking for – what’s not in your predictable plan.
“The brainstem is hyper-vigilant, waiting to see if there is anything dangerous, like something suddenly running in front of the car. As soon as it sees that, it takes over. The consequence is that you can get easily distracted if you allow yourself to be. We’re supposed to be focused when driving, but we are also supposed to be looking for unexpected dangers. It’s about the degree of that – recognising what is or isn’t critical to survival and consciously pulling away from the distraction.”
Hear more from Nathan on The Depot podcast: autosense.co.nz/thedepot.
