DISTRACTED DRIVING: MORE THAN CELL PHONES

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Driver distraction presents a serious and potentially deadly danger. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2008, 5,870 people died and an estimated 515,000 people were injured in police-reported crashes in which at least one form of driver distraction was reported on the police crash report.

While these numbers are significant, they may not state the true size of the problem, since the identification of distraction and its role in a crash can be very difficult to determine using only police-reported data.

Distracted driving comes in various forms, such as cell phone use, texting while driving, eating, drinking, talking with passengers, as well as using in-vehicle technologies and portable electronic devices. There are also other, less obvious forms of distractions, including day­dreaming or dealing with strong emotions.

What Employers Can Do

1. Ban texting while driving on the job. You can use the president's executive order banning texting and driving for federal employees as a template. (See www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-federal-leadership-reducing-text-messaging-while-driving.)

2. Know state laws. California bans the use of hand-held devices and texting while driving. See www.distraction.gov/state-laws/ for a list of other states that ban hand-held de­vices and/or texting while driving. Make sure your em­ployees know the law as well.

3. Create a safety culture. Make it clear to employees that you expect they will NOT talk or text on their cell phones while driving on company time or in company vehicles. Ensure that there are no negative conse­quences for employees who wait for a safe opportu­nity to take or return a call or text.

4. Have employees sign a contract that says they will not violate the organization's ban on texting and driving. Include a provision to advise employees that if a crash occurs, the employer has the right to sub­poena the employee's phone records, and if he/she was using a cell phone when the crash occurred, the crash will be considered preventable and the driver will assume all financial responsibility.

5. Conduct informal observational surveys of cell phone use at the entrances and exits of your business. Publicize the results to reinforce your distracted driving policy. Provide small incentives such as cou­pons, music download cards, special privileges like a free day of parking, etc., to employees observed driv­ing distraction-free.

6. Visit the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety's website (www.trafficsafety.org) to see what 24 leading companies are doing about company driver cell phone use. Consider integrating some of these policies into your organization's cell phone policy.

For more suggestions on improving worker safety, please contact the PCOC Insurance Program Department at Jenkins Insurance Group: (877) 860-7378.

Pest Control Operators of California
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