As phase one of the decadelong Performance-Based Standards (PBS)/Smart Truck pilot project nears completion, statistics have shown that if 10% of the country’s total truck fleet were PBS vehicles, SA’s road freight transport costs could drop in excess of 0.4% – saving the industry R2 billion annually.
The pilot project was introduced in 2007 as a subset of the Road Transport Management System (RTMS) and, as it closes in on the targeted 100 million PBS vehicle kilometres driven in phase one, has seen a 35.4% reduction in crash rates compared to the RTMScertified baseline With 299 587 fewer trips undertaken, because the vehicle can be designed outside the current legal limits and therefore carry heavier payloads, substantial financial savings have been recorded, with roughly 8.9 million litres of diesel saved.
Even in the relatively small test sample, in excess of 33.3 million vehicle kilometres have been saved.
This indicates the potential to substantially reduce road congestion, crashes, road fatalities, pollution and damages to the country’s road infrastructure once expanded.
Reduced trips imply that fewer trucks were on South Africa’s roads, yet the country was still able to move the same volume and mass of freight. PBS is an alternative to traditional prescriptive heavy vehicle legislation, where vehicle design limitations are more flexible, offering the heavy vehicle industry the potential to achieve higher productivity and safety levels through innovative and optimised vehicle design.
PBS vehicles are designed to perform their tasks as productively and sustainably as possible, while ensuring a minimum level of vehicle safety performance.
Each vehicle is required to undergo a thorough vehicle dynamics safety assessment and a road wear impact analysis, through the use of computer modelling.
The PBS project ensures that vehicles operate on road networks that are appropriate for their level of performance and therefore ensure a better match between vehicles and roads.
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‘PBS Project - Savings’
35.4% fewer crashes
299 587 fewer trips
8.9m litres of diesel saved
