Organisation of truck-driver training for the transportation of dangerous goods in Europe and North America

In Canada, as in several other countries, truck drivers involved in the transportation of dangerous goods must be trained. However, given the many differences in vehicles, substances transported and driving conditions, international guidelines are very open-ended. This article outlines the domestic training requirements in Canada, the United States, The Netherlands and Sweden, and examines the manner in which the training is provided. In both Canada and the United States, the responsibility for assuring a driver is adequately trained rests with the employer. It is the employer who determines the duration and content of any training program. In addition, the assessment of a driver is also an employer responsibility. In practice, possibility in light of liability issues, many employers use commercial training firms. However, generally speaking there is no national or regional accreditation program for such commercial firms. In Europe, where training is conducted in response to the European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road, training and testing must receive national accreditation, although the specific details of such accreditation are not spelled out. Sweden places its emphasis on careful accreditation of those providing training, while in The Netherlands more importance is placed on examinations to be used to test the results of the training. The intent of this article is to show that the same goal in four different countries has resulted in four different schemes, each of which appears to be accepted in the country of use. A comparison of safety achieved in the transportation of dangerous goods in each country is beyond the scope of this article. International evaluation studies would be necessary to draw scientifically-based conclusions on the effectiveness of truck-driver training systems for the safe transportation of dangerous goods.     

Results of the MITRA project: monitoring and intervention for the transportation of dangerous goods

The objective of the MITRA (monitoring and intervention for the transportation of dangerous goods) project was to prototype a new operational system for monitoring the transportation of dangerous goods in Europe based on regional responsibilities. This concept, based on systems used in air traffic control, aims to provide civil security centres with real-time knowledge of the position and contents of dangerous vehicles circulating in their area of responsibility, and, in the event of a dangerous situation, to issue warnings, alerts and crisis management information, thereby allowing intervention teams to react immediately with maximum safety. The project was funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme (STREP--specific targeted research project--under the Information Society Technologies priority). It started on 1 September 2004 and ended on 31 October 2006. This paper presents the results of this project and the conclusions derived from the field tests carried out in Germany and in the French/Spanish border region in order to test the proposed operational system.     

The development of a decision support framework for a quantitative risk assessment in multimodal green logistics: an empirical study

The objective of this research was to develop a decision support framework (DSF) to assess quantitative risk in multimodal green logistics. This risk assessment is the combination of a number of models, the failure mode and effects analysis, the risk contour plot, the quantitative risk assessment, the analytic hierarchy process and the data envelopment analysis which can support a user to perform risk assessment in various decisions. The contribution of this research is that the risk assessment model can generate an optimal green logistics route in accordance with weight from the user. The highlight of this DSF is that the quantitative assessment model can reduce bias on risk assessment of logistics route. An in-depth case study, recommendations, limitations and further research are also provided.