Employee Driving Safety

Driving safety is an issue that affects everyone. If we drive safely, then there is always "the other person" who does not.

Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death and injury for all ages. Crashes on and off the job have far-reaching financial and psychological effects on employees, their coworkers and families, and their employers.

Every 12 minutes someone dies in a motor vehicle crash, every 10 seconds an injury occurs and every 5 seconds a crash occurs. Many of these incidents occur during the workday or during the commute to and from work. Employers bear the cost for injuries that occur both on and off the job. Whether you manage a fleet of vehicles, oversee a mobile sales force or simply employ commuters, by implementing a driving safety program in the workplace you can greatly reduce the risks faced by your employees and their families while protecting your company's bottom line.

You need a driver safety program:

• To save lives and to reduce the risk of life-altering injuries within your workforce.
• To protect your organization's human and financial resources.
• To guard against potential company and personal liabilities associated witd crashes involving employees driving on company business.

Your program should work to keep the driver and those with whom he/she shares the road safe. And, if necessary, the program must work to change driver attitudes, improve behavior, and increase skills to build a “be safe” culture. By instructing your employees in basic safe driving practices and then rewarding safety-conscious behavior, you can help your employees and their families avoid tragedy.

Employees are an employer's most valuable asset. Workplace driver safety programs not only make good business sense but also are a good employee relations tool, demonstrating that employers care about their employees.

Over the next few days we will be discussing the steps for building a driver safety program in your workplace. These steps will be useful to any organization regardless of size of the organization, type of traffic encountered, number of vehicles involved, or whether employees drive company or personal vehicles for work purposes.