FMW: Tell us about Advanced Driver Training Services and how you got started.
Moser: I jokingly say that Advanced Driver Training Services (ADTS) was founded by accident. However, there is an element of truth in that statement. The founder of the company, Jim Wilkinson, was a police officer in a suburban Philadelphia police department. It was in the mid-70s and he saw a car late one night that had been reported stolen out of Philadelphia. A pursuit happened and Jim crashed as a result.
His department, which was a pretty progressive, realized that police officers receive all sorts of training to teach them how to shoot their guns. However, a lot of police officers are killed in car wrecks and they receive no driver training. Jim then received training and became an EVOC instructor, which is an Emergency Vehicle Operator’s Course. He and another gentleman, Kevin McCann, brought that training back to the Philadelphia region and they began training police officers in the Philadelphia area in the EVOC program.
A number of fire companies and ambulance squads in the Philadelphia region received EVOC training with Jim and Kevin. As a result, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article regarding the training and the head of sales training for a major pharmaceutical company saw that article. One day, he was driving by the Fort Washington Expo center and saw police cars swerving around traffic cones and wondered if these were the guys he read about. He stopped and started a conversation with Jim, asking him what training he could conduct for his sales drivers. From that, ADTS was started.
We did our first corporate program in 1983 and now we train in approximately 300 different locations every year. We train in Canada and most recently have conducted training in Central America. We have approximately 100 instructors, all of whom are either current or former police officers with backgrounds in EVOC instruction, highway safety and motor vehicle crash reconstruction. We see what happens when people make mistakes behind the wheel.
FMW: How do fleets view safety now, as opposed to when you first started training?
Moser: When we were all hit with the recession, we had a number of companies contacting us because they found that a good way to cut costs was to reduce their crash rate. Traffic crashes are very expensive. Crash expenses can include vehicle repair and replacements, injuries and the associated medical expenses, as well as property damage. If there is a fatality, the loss is just nonrecoverable. And then you also have litigation. We are a very litigious society, the United States. If you are driving on company business and you are involved in a wreck you can expect that you are going to be served. That is just the way it is.
Generally speaking as a nation, safety sells. Nearly all vehicle commercials promote safety. Not that many years ago you didn’t see or hear that. Focus was on luxury and the fine ride of the vehicle and the big engine. Now it is multi-airbag systems and pre-tensioners on the seatbelts and lane departure warning systems. Some of this stuff is driving me a little crazy because I think drivers may believe they don’t have to pay attention because the car is going to let them know when they are making a mistake. We know that the main cause of crashes is driver inattention. We need to educate people how to use the safety warning equipment properly.
I believe that as a nation we are better with regard to our focus on safety. I also think many organizations realize the benefit of safety and this success breeds more safety. Companies who have comprehensive safety initiatives are being emulated. Ultimately, creating a safe work environment for drivers is the right thing to do. I would like to say that every company does it because they want all of their drivers getting home at night safely, and many of them do. But the bottom line is the bottom line; it is a cost savings measure.
FMW: What trends are you seeing in this industry in terms of training? What seems to be working?
Moser: ADTS offers all forms of safety training. Classroom and behind the wheel still are the most popular programs. We do offer online training and we have seminars, but we find that the vast number of clients want the classroom/behind the wheel training.
I am not critical of online training — we offer it, but I believe that it is difficult to change an attitude with an online program. Driving involves two very important elements – skill and attitude. Skills can be improved and need to be worked on. However, you can be the most skilled driver in the world and if you have a poor attitude toward safety you are still going to overload your schedule, you are still going to eat, you are still going to get on that phone, you are going to be distracted and you are going to crash.
It is how you approach your driving, and that is why I think the classroom is just as important as the behind the wheel element. Whatever training a driver gets they need to walk it away from it saying – okay, I need to do this. They need to be convinced.
All ADTS students fill out critiques at every training program. A common comment we see is: “I wish my wife could go through this, I wish my husband could go through this or I wish my kids could go through this”. When I see these comments I know we got them; we have changed their attitude. We have had drivers come into our training who have been driving for 25 years and they say why do I need this? By the end of the day they are saying okay, it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. They buy into it.
You need that buy-in, you need to get people convinced that they are in charge of their own safety. You have a decision to make every time you sit down behind the wheel – am I going to be safe or am I going to be unsafe? That could be, well, it is raining, am I going to go a little slower?
And that decision even needs to be made when you set the alarm clock. Crashes happen sometimes hours before the actual collision occurs because they didn’t get up a little bit earlier even though they saw it was supposed to be bad weather the next day.
That is where that attitude comes in – are you thinking, are you trending your thoughts toward safety? Can you do it 100 percent of the time? You can’t, you know. But can you do better? That is where I think organizations are finding they have to create that safety culture. That is what we help people do, we help them get that culture rolling and get that buy-in and it has to come from the top down.
We always say field level managers are the most important people in your company. The field level managers and the people who have direct responsibility for the people that are driving their cars. Either they are telling them “Hey — go, go, go,” or they are telling them “Hey, now listen, safety — now go, go, go.” And that is the difference.
FMW: Let’s talk about a specific fleet that has embraced the training; what kinds of cost-savings have they seen?
Moser: A new client was training their new hires and their high risk drivers and they had some really good success. Within the first couple of years they had realized a savings of 5.5 million dollars. As a result of that, now every one of their driver goes through training when they get their vehicle. They go through classroom/behind the wheel training. It is part of their new-hire process.
We have over 200 classes a year for them in various areas and their drivers now also go through a training every three years. As a result, we have to come up with something new to keep it fresh for the drivers. It is not hard to do that because things change, especially considering the technology and all of the distractions that drivers are exposed to these days. This client has a total cell phone ban, which I just love. You know, you have got to put that phone away. Again, that is my personal decision – am I going to be safe?
FMW: I have taken a number of safety classes, but this is the one that really made the difference for me.
Moser: That is exactly what I was talking about making that impression and carrying it along with you. For example, let’s say we train a couple thousand drivers for an organization and let’s say 10 percent of them learn one thing in their lifetime — one thing that they are going to carry with them that is going to keep them out of one crash, which is going to get them home safe. What do you think the chances of that are? I’d say pretty darn good, and that makes it all worth it to me.
I reconstruct crashes. I have investigated about 3500 of them and I have to tell you, if I never see another one in my lifetime, I am just fine with it. This is why I am so passionate about safety. I think one of the worst things a cop has to do is knock on the door and tell them somebody is not coming home. That was the tough part of the job. Crashes cut a very wide swath.
When I reconstruct a crash, I will break it down into quarter second intervals. I have proven time and again where, if people could have a quarter second of time back, the crash never would have happened. They would have gone home. A quarter second. How many seconds do we lose being distracted? What occurs in split seconds may not be recovered in a lifetime for the people that are left behind. You see the crosses along the roadways now and it is heart wrenching.