The Safety Benefits of Simulation

We Confront the Problem of Accidents Full Throttle

Imagine, you’re driving on a wintery night. Despite your wide-eyed alertness you hit a patch of ice and your rig loses traction. It begins to slide out of control. The truck jackknifes. Traffic is bearing down on you from behind. What occurs next will change your life forever, if you survive. This happened to a driver in Denver, CO in April of 2019. The result? The jack-knifed semi resulted in a fiery crash and multiple fatalities.

Although not all accidents can be prevented, the chances of such accidents happening can be greatly reduced by simulating the condition that led to the accident while the student driver sits safely in a simulator.

ATS is in the business of reducing catastrophes and saving lives. Here is why:

• About every 15 minutes a person is killed or seriously injured in an accident caused by 18-wheelers or big rigs or semi-trucks. In total, nearly 500,000 trucking accidents occur each year.
• 841 truck drivers in the U.S. died while on the job in 2017—nearly half were due to collisions with other vehicles.
• 4,800 people were killed due to truck wrecks in 2017.
• “Driver/sales workers and truck drivers” are listed at #7 on the list of “The 25 Most Deadly Professions.”

With these grim statistics, safety should be of paramount importance for every person in the trucking industry, from students, to trucker driving schools, to trucker employers—just as safety is paramount for commercial airline pilots who carry thousands of passengers each week.

Airline training seeks to achieve safety for all by providing the most advanced simulator training possible for their pilots. Before a pilot trainee encounters a life-threatening situation in the air, he or she has likely experienced a similar situation multiple times on the ground in a simulator. At ATS we believe the lives of truckers and highway drivers are no less important than those connected with commercial airline flights. That is why we utilize the most advanced technology with our simulation instruments.

ATS Virtual Reality Simulator Training Prevents Tragic Accidents

Here are the types of trucker incidents that often lead to accidents:

• Jack-knifes
• Rollovers
• Tire blow-outs
• Swinging turns
• Blind spots
• Rear-end collisions
• Under-ride accidents
• Improper lost loads
• Head-on collisions
• T-bone accidents

Each one of these incidents can be experienced SAFELY in an ATS Virtual Reality Simulator, with the added detail of changing weather and traffic patterns.