"The driver is not the only one to blame for road accidents in Iran"
The chairman of the board of directors of the Iranian Passenger Bus Drivers' Association says that the driver is not the only one to blame for road accidents. Driver fatigue due to frequent trips, road problems, and old buses are also factors that cause accidents.
The bus driver was found guilty in the tragic accident in which a bus carrying elite students overturned in Hormozgan Province (September 1), killing at least 12 people, including 9 students.
The authorities responsible for investigating the accident said that “driver negligence” was the cause of the accident. It was said that “the driver was sleepy while driving and lost control of the bus after hitting the bridge cornice and bursting the front tire, and the bus overturned on its right side after traveling about 100 meters.”
But union activists and those involved in the passenger vehicle drivers' union say that drivers are not the only ones to blame for road accidents like this.
According to the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA), union activists for passenger transport drivers believe that excessive driver fatigue due to frequent trips, the poor quality of urban and suburban roads, and the lack of renovation of the bus and minibus fleet are among the main reasons for the increase in accidents.
Gholamreza Khademizadeh, chairman of the board of directors of the Passenger Bus Drivers Association, considers “driver drowsiness” to be more effective than any other factor in the occurrence of accidents. A factor that is itself caused by another factor, namely the lack of conditions and facilities necessary for drivers to rest.
This union activist told ILNA that the traffic police currently announce that more than 60 to 70 percent of accidents are due to driver drowsiness, while the law obliges the government to build dormitories for drivers, but there are no dormitories for drivers anywhere, not even in the capital's four passenger terminals.
According to the chairman of the board of directors of the Passenger Drivers' Association, in these circumstances, drivers have no choice but to go to the sleeping box inside the bus to rest, which will definitely not allow them to sleep well due to the noise of the terminal environment, and this will definitely affect the quality of their work while driving, so it is pointless to expect the driver not to get sleepy in these circumstances.
In addition to dormitory facilities, there should be other facilities such as showers, air conditioners, and heating devices in the drivers' workplaces. According to Khademizadeh, none of these necessary infrastructures are available in passenger terminals. While in European countries, there are standard dormitories for drivers that are equipped with soundproofing and have all the ventilation systems.
Technical offices have become delis.
According to the chairman of the board of directors of the Passenger Bus Drivers Association, another reason for drivers’ extreme fatigue is the lack of technical offices inside the country’s passenger terminals. He says: “Technical offices were located in terminals in the past to prevent drivers from wasting their time and energy. In this way, drivers would leave their schedules at the terminal first thing in the morning when they visited the terminal, so that the office manager would assign drivers trips based on the requests of the ordering companies.”
According to Khademizadeh, these offices have now been repurposed, and the driver has to waste a lot of time and energy to find a service. For example, he can find a service for the Tehran-Ahvaz route at 4:00 PM in the middle of the day, which is enough to prevent the driver from getting enough rest.
Most bus companies have turned their offices into food stalls and earn millions in revenue from them, so the driver is forced to wander around the terminal. According to Khademizadeh, this situation prevails in both private and state-owned companies.
As Khademizadeh says, the Cabinet resolution obliges the Terminals Organization and all municipalities in the country to equip passenger terminals with dormitories with the desired technical parameters, but no action has been taken in this regard, so that it can be said that there is no dormitory for drivers in the entire country, even with 30% of the standard.
Another reason for the disruption of sleep and rest hours for passenger drivers is roadside checkpoints. Khademizadeh says: The driver, who is resting in the bus's sleeping box, is woken up by a traffic police officer at the first checkpoint he arrives at to check his traffic documents. This happens several times during the day. This factor leads to irregular sleep for the driver, which, in addition to the fatigue of daily traffic on the road, becomes a problem for him.
The role of control cameras in the driver's cabin
The head of the Passenger Bus Drivers' Association, continuing his conversation with ILNA, also considers the role of driver control cameras on buses to be negative. He said that the "Smart Fleet Traffic Monitoring System" has been installed on buses by the traffic police in order to reduce road casualties. This device includes an online streaming camera that monitors the behavior of drivers.
Khademizadeh says that the driver is forced to drink tea, coffee, and even talk to the co-driver to prevent drowsiness. With this device, the driver will be fined if he drinks behind the wheel or talks to the co-driver. Even if he tries to change places with the co-driver while he is drowsy, the camera records this movement and the driver is fined for leaving the car to someone else, and even his logbook is confiscated.
He emphasizes that installing these surveillance cameras is an illegal and immoral act that is not seen anywhere else in the world.
This union activist adds that despite all these conditions, the driver only has to worry about the bus's technical problems after reaching their destination: they have to change the oil or fix a puncture and refuel so that the car is ready for tomorrow, which takes up a total of two hours of the driver's time. And we're just getting to the point where the driver doesn't have a suitable place to rest in any of the big cities.
The age and wear and tear of buses is another factor affecting road accidents. The head of the Passenger Bus Drivers Association says that although the average age of the fleet is between 8 and 10 years, these vehicles, which are from world-renowned brands, are assembled domestically, which has caused their quality to be at the lowest level in the world compared to the originals, and this also places a lot of costs on the shoulders of the owner and driver.
Longer working hours and road problems
Fatigue from long working hours is also a factor in accidents on Iranian roads. Khademizadeh says that a service driver works more than eight hours a day. Although the route may not be more than eight hours, he must spend more than eight hours on coordination and moving the bus out of the city, which leads to extreme fatigue.
The head of the Passenger Drivers' Association adds that companies may not provide driver assistance in order to save money, and this is extremely tiring for the driver after two trips a day. Meanwhile, drivers working in administrative services and factories do not have smart traffic cards or road transport licenses.
This union activist further points to the problems of Iran's roads as another factor causing accidents, saying that single-lane roads are still taking their toll. For example, there was a time when dozens of people were killed and injured on the Kerman-Rafsanjan road because it was a single lane, and now that it has become a two-lane road, the accident rate has dropped significantly. Therefore, one of the reasons for the increase in fatal accidents is single-lane highways.
The head of the country's passenger drivers' union added that, overall, there are no standard guardrails (roadside and middle protections) on the roads and traffic signs are small, all of which create problems for buses, which are difficult to control on some routes.
Source: DW
