Todd Conklin explains why the humble rumble strip is a near perfect safeguard: it only works when the driver fails, and when the driver fails it lets them detect the failure and correct the outcome almost simultaneously. He shares the crash reduction statistics, then asks the question that matters for any high risk operation: when your people drift, do you have rumble strips?
Key takeaways
- Rumble strips cut fatal accidents by roughly 52 percent and run-off-the-road accidents by 47 percent.
- They are designed to work when the driver screws up: drifting, fatigue, distraction or complacency.
- A good safeguard lets the person detect the failure and correct the outcome, almost simultaneously.
- We don't drive error out of organizations; we build systems that handle variability from human operators.
- Ask of your high risk operations: when people drift, and they will, what tells them they've drifted?
I think the rumble strip is a near perfect safeguard.
We don't drive error out of our organizations. We build error in to our systems and processes. We build systems that are able to handle variability from human operators, because we constantly have variability from human operators.
You know people will drift. That's not even unusual. When they do, do you have rumble strips? Something to indicate to them that they've drifted, allow them to detect and correct?
The SafetyTalker take
This is a great mental model to bring to your next JHA review: for each critical task, ask what the rumble strip is. If the only thing standing between a drifting worker and a serious injury is paying attention, you don't have a safeguard, you have a hope. Look for cheap, simple cues that flag drift before it becomes an incident.
Full transcript
Read the full transcript
Okay, your guess is as good as mine why I didn’t do this earlier. Hi everybody, welcome to the PreAccident Investigation safety moment. I’m your host, Todd Conklin, and today we’re going to talk about rumble strips. And I talk about rumble strips all the time, and I can’t believe I didn’t do this safety moment earlier. This is by special request. In fact, there’s been a ton of requests to have this discussion, so let’s just have it.
I think the rumble strip is a near perfect safeguard. I’m giving that silence for everything to kind of sink in a little bit. You with me? How can I say that? Well, there’s a couple things. One is, if you look up rumble strips, and you ought to, they’re in the National Transportation Highway Safety Administration top 10 defense list. There’s a lot of research around them, and here’s what we know. If you put a rumble strip on a road, either side rumble strips or center rumble strips, you’ll have a decrease of angle accidents by 77 percent, a decrease of head-on accidents by 51 percent, a decrease of sideswipe, same car, by 55 percent, a decrease of sideswipe by opposite moving car by 45 percent, and you’ll have a decrease of same vehicle run off the road accidents by 47 percent. All in all, your decrease in fatal accidents will be about 52 percent.
Now, those statistics are interesting and they’re very significant. I mean, significant both in interesting and in statistically important to this story, right? But here’s what I think is most interesting about this little comment I’m making about rumble strips. All that stuff aside, I think rumble strips are the perfect defense because rumble strips are designed to work when the driver screws up. In fact, rumble strips won’t work if the driver doesn’t drift away somehow operationally, fall asleep, or stop paying attention, or become complacent, or inattentive, or distracted, or whatever else you want to put in that word there. The rumble strip counts on the driver failing. And then when the driver fails, the rumble strips allow the driver to do two things almost simultaneously: detect and correct.
If you think about this, they’re elegant in their simplicity. They’re super, super cheap. They cost nothing to maintain. And they’re nearly perfect, because this safeguard is designed to work when the driver fails, and when that driver fails, it allows that driver the opportunity to detect, detect the failure, and then correct the outcome.
So let me ask this question around your high risk operations in your organization. You know people will drift. That’s not even unusual. When they do, do you have rumble strips? Something to indicate to them that they’ve drifted, allow them to detect and correct? The rumble strip is elegant. Elegant. Think about it.
That’s your safety moment for today. I hope you had fun. Learn something new every single day. Big day, big day, big day for that, right? Have as much fun as you possibly can, and for goodness sakes, be safe. All right everybody, I did a safety moment on rumble strips. Are you happy now?
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