JOST Donates Fifth Wheel to Safety Initiative – October 2022

JOST Australia has donated a JOST JSK37 Sensor Coupling fifth wheel to non-profit industry initiative, TRANSAFE WA, and its iNSTRUCKTA! Safety Truck project.

iNSTRUCKTA! is the name of TRANSAFE WA’s custom truck and semi-trailer combination in development, which is spec’d to deliver innovative educational road safety programs.

The project was made possible with the support of the Federal Government’s Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative (HVSI), WA’s Road Safety Commission and other industry partners.

TRANSAFE WA Executive Officer, Rob Sharpe, told Trailer that JOST Australia is one of the initiative’s safety partners who have kindly donated products for the project.

“The Sensor Coupling was chosen as it offers a safety solution when coupling the trailer and it also permanently monitors the connection status,” he said.

“The connection sensor, king pin sensor and coupling height sensors are monitored by the remote dash display or can be optioned up for truck specific dash display integration.

“Our JOST JSK 37 Sensor Coupling fifth wheel has been fitted with Lubetronic technology for the king pin and has a greaseless plate, so it ticks all the boxes for us and is a great example of a safer practice.”

The iNSTRUCKTA! Safety Truck will compromise of five main activities:

  • Participants will be encouraged to climb up into the cabin to get a first-hand experience of where a truck driver sits and to see what the driver can and can’t see.
  • Participants will be encouraged to enter the trailer where they can sit in one of 10 truck seats, being immersed in a virtual reality experience via wireless VR headsets. The experience will highlight situations such as overtaking, turning trucks, blind spots and cutting in.
  • Participants will be encouraged to use the wall-mounted touch screens to guide them through an interactive quiz/learning experience.
  • Participants will also get to view various road safety videos that will be shown on the full rear wall of the trailer’s interior.
  • Lastly, participants will be encouraged to pledge to do their part in reducing the road toll via another couple of wall mounted touch screens.

Sharpe explained that the safety truck is mostly about teaching current and future road users on how to safely interact with heavy vehicles while also exposing each participant to trucks and the transport industry.

“iNSTRUCKTA! will be out there to encourage our current and future drivers to consider entering the Road Transport Industry as a career,” he said.

“This secondary benefit will help to alleviate the growing road transport freight task to which the number of trucks on the road is set to treble by 2050.”

The trailer build is nearing completion and is expected to be ready to hit the road before the end of 2022.