By Ben Reiland
June 14, 2022
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) recently shared their 2020 data on distracted driving. While the number of police-reported crashes decreased by 22% compared to 2019, the number of fatalities reached 38,824. The NHTSA reports that this is the highest number of auto-accident-related deaths since 2007. What does this have to do with your company? Is there anything your business can do about this? As it happens, there’s a safe driving program.
Employees that drive for work are an essential part of most businesses. However, whether they’re unaware or they’ve prioritized other initiatives, a portion of companies have no safety program at all. Fortunately, companies can address this issue easily with a comprehensive safety program. But what makes a safety program comprehensive? What all goes into it? Let’s dig in.
A comprehensive safe driving program consists of three pieces: insurance verification, motor vehicle records and driver safety training. Each piece covers an essential aspect of driver safety. Companies may implement one or two of these, but without all three they still have blind spots. Most businesses will outsource each of these pieces. We’ll go into each in detail below, beginning with insurance verification.
Auto insurance is as essential to driving for a company as a driver’s license. Yet companies are still surprised when they find out that one of their drivers does not have auto insurance. Checking auto insurance should be one of the first things a company does when hiring an employee for a driving role. Safety program vendors can simplify this process. What’s more, if a driving employee cancels their auto insurance, the right vendor can catch this change and inform both employer and employee.
Motor vehicle records are the record of a person’s driving history, include vehicle events such as traffic citations, accident reports, DUI convictions, and license suspensions. When someone pulls an MVR report, they receive the most up to date version of this information. It’s another essential for a company hiring employees for driving roles. In fact, most companies use MVRs early in the hiring process. If a potential candidate has a worrisome record, an MVR report can quickly disqualify them from a driving position.
However, once a candidate has been hired for the driving role, most companies never run another MVR. This can pose a problem. Say an employee hired years prior are found to be at fault in an automobile accident. That’s information an employer would want to know, especially if the employee is trusted to drive for the company. Unfortunately, businesses that only pull MVR reports during the hiring process won’t know of the incident unless the employee informs them. To prevent this, proactive companies establish yearly, quarterly, or even monthly recurring MVRs.
Insurance verification and MVRs can prevent employees who shouldn’t be driving from taking on, or continuing in, driving roles. However, these measures are reactionary, based on red flags in driving behavior. To prevent red flags, or even accidents, companies need to implement driving safety training.
There are many forms of driver safety training available. Most of them are general lessons that paint the problems of reckless driving in broad strokes. The right safety training begins with an assessment of the driver’s current performance. Following the assessment, the program can analyze reaction times and bad driving habits. From there, they can provide modules specific to the issues of each driving employee, addressing problems before they become accidents.
The driving employees of a company are essential to the continued operation of their business. And because they’re driving more than most Americans, they’re at a greater risk to get into accidents. Ignoring the risk or waiting until it becomes an issue isn’t the right way forward. Protect your company from liability and protect your mobile workforce with a comprehensive safe driving program. Ready to learn more? Contact us to begin making work safer for your driving employees.
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