Cross Industry Forum 2025: What Human Factors Can Teach Fleet Leaders

31 Oct

On 22 October, Irish Rail kindly hosted the annual Cross Industry Forum on Road Safety at Johnstown House, Enfield - bringing together safety professionals from transport, utilities, logistics and the public sector to share ideas on improving safety for those who drive at work. DriverFocus was invited too and here’s just one key takeaway…

Among the most insightful presentations came from Dr. Nora Balfe[i], Head of Human Factors at Irish Rail, whose work explores how people interact with complex systems - from train drivers to engineers, and indeed, road users. Her message resonated strongly: understanding human factors is central to preventing crashes, not by blaming individuals, but by designing systems that support how people really behave. See also: “Back From the Future – Hopes, Habits and Reversing Road Safety Decline”

Rethinking ‘Human Error’ in Road Safety

One of Dr. Balfe’s key slides showed a striking paradox: while human error contributes to the majority of incidents, human performance keeps the vast majority of journeys safe. That duality - people as both the cause of error and the source of resilience - reframes how fleet leaders should think about risk.

This mirrors the Safe System approach described by Larsson & Tingvall (2013)[ii], which argues that no one should be killed or seriously injured as a result of a road crash, even when mistakes occur. Instead of expecting perfect behaviour, the Safe System focuses on designing vehicles, roads and management systems that tolerate human fallibility and mitigate its consequences.

For employers, this means recognising that crashes are not just a result of individual driver failure such as making errors or breaking rules. Often, “task, team and organisational factors” are significant contributory factors.

Attention, Overload and Real-World Driving

Dr. Balfe’s research slides on visual attention and task overload drew knowing smiles from the audience. “Hands up if you’ve ever gone through an amber light when you had time to stop,” she asked. Most hands went up!

Human Factors research consistently shows that attention is a finite resource. Modern vehicles, laden with sensors, screens and alerts, can both help and hinder drivers. Cognitive overload increases the likelihood of missed cues, late reactions or risk-taking to “catch-up.”

In fleet operations, this insight translates directly to policy and design: safety depends not just on compliance, but on creating driving environments - physical and organisational - that don’t set people up to fail. Overly complex in-cab systems, time pressure or unclear procedures can all overload drivers’ mental bandwidth. See also “Minimising Driver Distraction Risks and Safeguarding Business”:

Lessons for Fleet and Safety Leaders

For Irish employers, integrating Human Factors thinking into daily fleet management means moving beyond tick-box compliance and towards system safety. Three practical lessons emerged from the Forum:

Design safer systems, not just safer drivers.
Align journey planning, vehicle choice and workload expectations with the HSA’s Safe System of Work[iii] principles - recognising that people will make mistakes and designing processes that reduce their consequences.
Monitor and support attention, don’t just punish distraction.
Use driver risk assessment and telematics data to identify when attention or fatigue may be an issue and respond with coaching or workload review rather than blame.
Share learning across departments.
Fleet, HR and EHS teams should collaborate on induction, policy, and supervision - ensuring that human performance is understood as part of organisational design, not just individual behaviour.

RSA collision data[iv] shows that around one-third of all road fatalities in Ireland involves someone driving for work, reminding every employer that driving remains one of the highest-risk activities their staff undertake.

The Human Element Isn’t Going Away

As Dr. Balfe reminded attendees, automation and technology will not eliminate the human element in transport - they will simply redefine it. The challenge for fleet leaders is to understand how people actually think, decide and cope under real-world pressure, and to build safer systems around them. See also: “Metrics That Matter In Motor Fleet”

At DriverFocus, we help employers translate these insights into practice - combining technology, training and analytics to reduce driving risk, improve compliance and build safer systems around people.

Visit driverfocus.ie to learn more about how we can help your organisation drive safer, smarter outcomes.