By Brian Kinniry, Senior Director of Strategic Services, The CEI Group, Inc.
Some fleets believe they have a full-fledged safety program when, in reality, the methods in place keep drivers compliant but never truly involve those drivers in the safety culture. Make sure your fleet is doing more than the bare minimum for compliance and create a true safety culture that engages the workforce.
So, how do you instill a safety culture for your fleet instead of a compliance-focused culture? First, we must define the terms. Compliance in this sense is a bare minimum approach that allows a fleet admin to check off certain boxes without taking the next step. But that is not a safety culture.
A safety culture is an attitude that permeates all levels of business where there is an acceptance and understanding of the role safety plays – to the point that safe practices become second nature.
NAFA I&E is happening in Anaheim in April, where over 2,000 fleet professionals will come together for three and a half days of intense networking, education and fun.
Measure your company’s cost of crashes, both on-the-job and off-the-job with NETS’ new Cost of Collisions Calculator.
Employers are in a unique position to directly influence their employees driving habits – and literally save lives. Those with robust road safety programs understand that whether an employee is involved in a crash when driving on the job or off the job, it still affects the employer. Implementing proactive safety initiatives such as defensive driver training and establishing comprehensive policies surrounding distractions, seat belts and fatigue are just a few measures employers can take to reduce employee risk behind the wheel.
With this data, you’ll be able to make the business case to support investment in employee-wide safe driving programs. They say that knowledge is power. In this case, knowledge can help you to reduce risk and save lives. What could be more powerful than that?
As a major oil exporter, it may be surprising to learn that Norway is ahead of the rest of the world with about 52 percent of the new cars sold last year being powered on new forms of fuel.
Norway offers generous incentives that make electric cars cheaper to buy and provides additional benefits once the vehicles are on the road
“I had been wanting an electric car for a long time for environmental reasons, but they were expensive,” said Zanete Anderson Lilley, a senior adviser in Norway at the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy organization. Lilley eventually bought a Kia Soul, a small five-door electric car, for about $24,600 last summer. “If it wasn’t for the subsidies, I guess most people would still choose fuel,” she added.
Read the article at San Francisco Chronicle.
In a newly filed patent, Mazda thinks it has found a better way to end distracted driving and make driving more fun.
Mazda's proposed system can detect when your attention wavers, knows when it's mostly OK to look away, and when it's really not—just might work. Especially if it can convince you—rather than scold you—to draw your eyes back to the road.
"We still believe fully in the idea that the most powerful computer in the car is an attentive driver, and that the journey is as important as the destination," says Mazda rep Jeremy Barnes.
Read the article at Wired.