For an employer, traffic accidents result in increased costs of conducting business. The costs of accidents include legal fees and settlements; workers compensation, health and vehicle insurance; and employees' time off work. Many of these costs, particularly costs of insurance, have being increasing at a rate faster than the rate of consumer price inflation. Yet driving is often an almost indispensable part of conducting business. This is particularly true for companies with representatives and sales people who need to visit existing and potential customers on a regular basis. In order to reduce accident costs, many companies that need employees to drive regularly on company business implement driver safety and training programs.
Conventional driver safety programs typically employ “commentary drives” in which a manager (1) rides with an employee who drives one or more company vehicles (for example, cars, vans, or trucks), and (2) evaluates and critiques the employee's actions behind the wheel in a number of specific categories, such as vehicle spacing (tailgating), use of directional signals, seat belt use, observation of traffic control devices, and similar driving behavior. The manager instructs the employee-driver as to the proper methodologies for these categories during the commentary drive; the manager may also provide a written and/or verbal report to the employee-driver, the company, or both.
The conventional driver safety programs suffer from several drawbacks. First, most managers receive limited, if any, training in evaluating and correcting driving habits of employees. For example, the training may be limited to reading a short pamphlet or attending a limited scope course. Such limited training may not properly prepare the manager to educate the employee regarding proper driving habits, techniques, and laws.
Second, it should be remembered that the manager has other duties—e.g., sales performance management—which the manager probably considers to be his or her primary job duties. While such assessment of the relative importance of the various duties by the manager may be correct, it is likely to lead the manager to place insufficient emphasis on the driver training of the employees supervised by the manager.
Third, during the commentary drive the manager's attention may be diverted to a new driver problem before the manager fully addresses a previous driver problem. The manager may thus neglect to provide an adequate explanation of how to correct the previously-identified driver problem.
Fourth, the corrective effect of the commentary provided during the commentary drive may be both weak and short-lived, because both the employee-driver and the manager are preoccupied with other tasks and discussions during the drive. The attention of the employee-driver is necessarily divided between (1) actual driving, and (2) absorbing and responding to the comments provided by the manager. Similarly, the manager's attention may also be divided between (1) evaluating the actual driving of the employee-driver, (2) commenting on the problem driving behavior seen, and (3) taking written notes for a report. Such “multitasking” interferes with proper instructions by the manager, and with learning and retention of the learned material by the employee-driver.
Fifth, the manager may not be aware of information that, if it were known to the manager, would affect the manager's evaluation and the commentary provided to the employee-driver. For example, the manager may not be aware of the health status and typical driving patterns of the employee-driver, and of the mechanical state of the vehicle used during the commentary drive. For example, the manager may not be aware that the employee-driver requires corrective lenses for driving, or that the employee-driver takes medications that induce drowsiness. Because the employee-driver is likely to be on his or her best driving behavior during the commentary drive, the manager may also not become aware that the employee-driver has formed unsafe or otherwise undesirable driving habits, such as hard acceleration and braking, or excessive speed in turns. Similarly, the manager may not be aware that the employee does not schedule his or her daily appointments in a preferred sequence (generally, the first appointment of the day should be geographically farthest from home or office location of the employee-driver).
Sixth, after evaluating the employee-driver and commenting on the drive, typically very little—if any—further training takes place; and if further training does take place, it is usually generalized training, not specifically targeted to correct the problem driving behavior that the manager noticed in the course of the commentary drive, or the problem driving behavior exhibited by the employee-driver at other times.
Seventh, the critiquing portion of the commentary drive may engender or enhance personal tensions between the manager and the employee-driver. Critiquing and criticizing in an inoffensive way is an art possessed by few, and even the gentlest of criticisms may offend some people.
These shortcomings pose potential risk management and liability problems, and may cause decreased employee performance.