Safety – It's A Habit
David is 24 years old, drives a class 8 tractor trailer and is based out of Baltimore.
Safety - Its a habit
David is 24 years old, drives a class 8 tractor trailer and is based out of Baltimore. It has been more than 2 years since he started driving and his manager is very happy with his performance. He has always managed to be ahead of schedule and has also received the award for zero accidents last year. Achieving both timeliness and being safe is a hard thing to do and David has managed to do both. His Manager John was considering putting together a safety program for the fleet and he was planning to take inputs from his best drivers, including DavidOne day, he got a phone call in the middle of the afternoon – David’s tractor trailer was involved in a messy collision and he was asked to go to the site immediately. At the site, among the mangle of steel and grease, he got to know David was safe and was being treated at a nearby hospital. Sadly however, there were 2 fatalities in the passenger car with which David’s vehicle had collided. Assessing the situation, John figured out that David’s vehicle had rear ended the passenger car when it had braked suddenly. David had not maintained safe following distance and it proved to be fatal.Dangerous driving patterns like this can go unnoticed for a long duration of time but start hurting as the law of averages starts catching up. David’s propensity of not maintaining safe distance had gone unnoticed for such a long duration of time that he was even rewarded for his driving skills. Safety is no accident – a fleet has to strive and inculcate this as a habit to improve the overall safety of the fleet and its drivers.ADAS(Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and driver behavior analytics go hand in hand to coach the driver both in real-time and offline.In the above instance it would have informed David when he was not maintaining safe distance, allowing him time to brake well in advance. The offline part involves analytics that are accessible to a fleet manager to assess the risk profiles of different drivers in the fleet, and in turn empowers the fleet manager to concentrate on specific areas of improvement with his drivers.Advanced video-based safety systems are a powerful tool helping fleets drastically reduce the risks of accidents. Its time for fleets to make this a habit.
