Waste collection vehicles are everywhere we are.
They operate outside our homes and schools, around sporting fields and parks, along busy city streets, at office and industrial complexes and on quiet rural roads.
Every day they work alongside pedestrians, cyclists, children on bikes and scooters, people pushing prams, commuters on e-scooters and motorbikes, and people who may be distracted by a mobile phone, conversation, music or simply the activity around them.
Unlike many heavy vehicles, waste collection vehicles also do much more than drive from A to B. They stop and start constantly, reverse into streets and laneways, manoeuvre in confined spaces and use large mechanical arms, hooks and lifting equipment to collect and empty bins.
For 25 years, SGESCO-MAX has worked with waste management companies, councils and vehicle body builders to develop safety solutions around these particular risks.
Today, advances in radar, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and active safety controls are providing fleets with more ways to protect drivers, workers and vulnerable road users (VRUs) around waste collection vehicles. This article looks at four of the risks that are now preventable — and at what councils and contractors can do about them.
SGESCO-MAX’s relationship with the waste industry goes back to 2001, when Trans-Pacific Waste Management, now Cleanaway, approached the company to solve the problem of unattended garbage trucks rolling away.
The resulting MAX-SAFE Anti-Rollaway Brake System™ became SGESCO-MAX's flagship safety product and is now used extensively across Australian heavy vehicle fleets, with more than 27,500 MAX-SAFE systems deployed globally.
A few years later, a reversing incident involving a garbage truck prompted Ipswich City Council to work with SGESCO-MAX on another problem: how to detect a person or object behind a reversing vehicle and stop the truck before a collision occurred.
This led to MAX-SAFE Reverse Watch®.
Both technologies have continued to evolve, but perhaps the biggest advances have come in recent years as AI cameras, more sophisticated radar and active controls have opened the door to addressing some of the risks that are particularly challenging for waste management vehicles.
Reversing remains an unavoidable part of many waste collection operations.
Trucks may need to reverse into laneways, cul-de-sacs, commercial premises, sporting facilities or other locations where turning a heavy vehicle is difficult or impossible.
The problem is that the area immediately behind a heavy vehicle is also one of its largest blind spots.
MAX-SAFE Reverse Watch® 2.0 uses advanced radar to detect pedestrians, vehicles and obstacles behind a heavy vehicle day or night. Its predictive collision detection considers the movement of the vehicle and approaching objects, while dynamic detection zones respond to changing risk. Importantly, Reverse Watch 2.0 can be integrated with active braking so the system does more than warn the driver: when an imminent hazard is detected, the vehicle will automatically stop.
Veolia Tasmania has installed Reverse Watch 2.0 with active braking as part of a suite of MAX-SAFE technologies on new residential collection vehicles operating across northwest Tasmania. These trucks work across suburban streets, city laneways and rural roads, demonstrating that reversing risk isn't confined to densely populated cities.
JJ's Waste & Recycling has also installed Reverse Watch 2.0, together with MAX-SAFE AI camera technologies and Anti-Rollaway, on nine new vehicles servicing the Cassowary Coast Regional Council.
The rear of the truck isn't the only area a driver can't always see.
Waste collection vehicles operate in close proximity to pedestrians, cyclists and other road users who can instantly disappear into blind spots at the front, sides and corners of a vehicle.
Left-hand turns can be particularly hazardous. A cyclist, pedestrian or e-scooter rider may be travelling alongside a truck while remaining difficult or impossible for the driver to see.
MAX-SAFE Protect 360 AI™ uses AI cameras positioned around a vehicle to identify stationary and moving pedestrians, cyclists and other VRUs within tailorable zones. With more than 99.9% accuracy in detecting people, the technology virtually eliminates false-positive activations, which reduces unwanted driver distractions. Because the system detects people rather than simply detecting any object, it alerts the driver to a genuine hazard rather than to every passing sign, bin or parked car — cutting the nuisance alarms that lead drivers to tune warnings out.
Individual modular solutions — Side View, Corner View, Rear View and 360° View — can be configured for the front, rear, sides and corners of a vehicle, or combined to provide more comprehensive 360° blind-spot awareness.
Cleanaway trialled MAX-SAFE Side View on a rear-loader operating in Brisbane's CBD. The system uses the vehicle’s indicator signal and steering angle to determine when an alert is required and activates only when a person enters the programmed danger zone — not every time the driver indicates.
For the driver, that means a relevant warning when someone is in the blind spot without adding unnecessary alarms to an already busy operating environment.
Veolia has also successfully trialled Side View, Corner View, Rear View and 360° AI alongside other MAX-SAFE technologies on one of its residential council contracts.
Some of the greatest risks around waste vehicles arise when the vehicle itself isn't moving.
Side, front and rear loaders use large mechanical arms and bins weighing hundreds of kilograms to collect and empty waste. During these operations, a pedestrian or cyclist can unknowingly enter the operating zone of the equipment.
Traditional mirrors and cameras can help a driver or operator see the hazard. The latest AI technology goes further.
MAX-SAFE Side-Arm Pedestrian Protection™ uses AI cameras to monitor the work zone around a side-loading waste vehicle.
If a person enters the defined area while the arm is operating, the system can warn the driver and the VRU. When integrated with the vehicle body controls, it can also stop the side arm and, where appropriate, move it to a safer position.
Smart Environmental became the first waste management company in Australasia to trial the integrated technology on a Bucher Municipal side-loader operating in north Auckland.
Less than 45 minutes into the first day of the trial, the system intervened in what Smart Environmental described as a potential serious incident involving a member of the public.
Veolia has since adopted the technology, including on residential collection vehicles in Tasmania.
Front and rear loaders present different challenges.
When a front-loader raises a large bin above the cab, the driver's forward visibility can be substantially obscured. A pedestrian or cyclist approaching from the front or front sides can move into the operating area without being seen.
MAX-SAFE Front Loader Pedestrian Protection™ uses three AI cameras to monitor these danger zones while the lifting equipment is operating. The system can alert the operator when a person is detected, with the option to actively halt the lifting operation.
At the rear of a rear-loader, the operator faces another visibility problem. While controlling the lift from one side of the truck, they cannot simultaneously have a clear view of the opposite side.
MAX-SAFE Rear Loader Pedestrian Protection™ addresses this by monitoring the side opposite the operator. If the operator is working from the left, the right side is monitored, and vice versa.
Again, the technology can progress from detection and warning through to actively halting the lifting operation.
These solutions can be incorporated into new vehicle builds or retrofitted to existing waste vehicles, as was the case for this recycling company.
Sometimes an off-the-shelf safety solution isn't enough.
Ipswich City Council — the same council that helped shape Reverse Watch two decades ago — recently encountered such a challenge with a new Volvo FM hook truck used to collect large 32m³ skip bins.
When loaded, the skip extends approximately 1.8 metres beyond the rear of the truck. This created a problem for conventional radar-based reversing protection because the radar would detect the overhanging bin and trigger the vehicle's braking system.
Working with the Council, SGESCO-MAX developed an AI-camera-based solution that could distinguish a vulnerable road user within the programmed danger zone and activate the truck's electronic braking system when a person was detected.
It is a good example of why waste management safety requires an understanding not only of heavy vehicles, but of the specialist bodies, equipment and collection tasks they perform.
The advances in heavy vehicle safety technology over the past five years have been significant.
AI cameras can now accurately identify people rather than simply objects. Advanced radar can track multiple hazards and assess their movement. Safety systems can provide targeted spoken warnings rather than constant alarms. Most importantly, active controls can intervene to stop a vehicle or lifting mechanism when the driver or operator cannot respond to the danger effectively.
Waste management companies including Cleanaway, Veolia, JJ's Waste & Recycling and Smart Environmental, along with councils such as Ipswich City Council, are already trialling, adopting and helping advance these technologies.
Councils also have an important role to play through the safety requirements they include in waste collection tenders.
When Cassowary Coast Regional Council sought a new residential waste collection provider, its tender stipulated pedestrian protection and active warning. JJ's responded with nine new collection vehicles incorporating MAX-SAFE Anti-Rollaway, Reverse Watch 2.0 and Protect 360 AI technologies.
It demonstrates what can happen when councils and waste management companies put community safety front and centre.
The technology to address many known waste vehicle risks is no longer something for the future. Proven and affordable solutions are available now and can be incorporated into new vehicles or, in many cases, retrofitted to existing fleets.
For councils and waste management companies reviewing fleet safety, new vehicles or upcoming waste contracts, the question increasingly is not: what technology is available?
It is: which risks can we prevent?
If you are reviewing fleet safety, specifying a new vehicle build, or writing safety requirements into an upcoming waste collection contract, the SGESCO-MAX team can walk you through which of these risks can be addressed on your vehicles today, what can be retrofitted, and what leading councils are now specifying.