Commercial Driver Safety Program: How to Get Started

Putting a commercial driver safety program in place is critical to ensure the safety of mobile workers and others on the road. A well-designed program can help reduce accidents and injuries, increase productivity levels, and lower liability risks.

This blog will suggest solutions to these issues before highlighting Tourmo's driver behavior solution and how it can help businesses take the right approach to make this process easier.

The Challenges to Getting Started

For several reasons, most enterprise organizations may find implementing a commercial driver safety program difficult. Designing and implementing a program to meet an organization's complex and rapidly changing needs requires significant time, money, and resources.

To ensure driver safety, all regulatory and compliance standards must be met. In addition, to keep up with changing industry standards and best practices and comply with local, state, and federal laws, these standards must be updated regularly.

The most common difficulties in implementing a commercial driver safety program center around a lack of employee engagement, limited resources and time, and difficulties monitoring driver behavior and the performance of mobile workers.

We've discussed these challenges and provided solutions for further consideration below.

Ineffective (or Nonexistent) Policies and Procedures

The first step in putting a driver safety program in place is carefully examining your current safety practices. This process will involve reviewing accident records and recent incidents, analyzing driver behavior, and identifying critical areas for improvement.

Based on this assessment, identify areas where current policies and procedures fail to address your unique operational concerns and pain points. For example, you may need to establish and communicate reasoning for avoiding risky driving behavior, how drivers document safety incidents, or how your company performs vehicle maintenance.

To ensure success, keep your safety policies updated with all applicable laws and regulations, and address new concerns as they occur. 

Lack of Engagement or Participation

Employees often resist change when implementing a new safety program. To overcome this common challenge, it is critical to establish a positive relationship between your policy changes and all team members. Providing multiple opportunities for employees to get involved and stay engaged in your company's safety culture will yield the best results.

This process can be accomplished and facilitated more effectively using the right technology solutions to provide clear communication, encourage participation, and provide ongoing training opportunities and incentives.

Also, continuously widely sharing positivity around those that participate, engage in, or complete requested training, behaviors, or classes should be recognized for their participation.

Technology for Safety With Diminished Returns

Tracking the behavior of a mobile workforce is one of the most difficult aspects of implementing a driver safety program. Monitoring driving behavior is complex, especially difficult for organizations with large and dispersed fleets.

Even with sophisticated technology infrastructure and a team of data analysis and interpretation experts, it is easy to lack the insight needed to make real-time changes to lower risk and prevent accidents from occurring.

If your organization is one of many currently using multiple technologies for safety and experiencing diminishing returns or has too many applications or too much information to sift through, it is critical to consider how new technologies, such as Tourmo, can help. Our AI-powered solutions can help monitor driving behavior, unify applications and data, provide training, and enable drivers to self-correct risky driving behavior without needing supervisor involvement.

Tourmo’s Driver Behavior Solution

Tourmo's AI-powered mobility solutions offer advanced driver behavior monitoring for enterprise organizations, providing high-level visibility to manage risk and make data-driven decisions. Our patented technology can accurately assess your mobile workforce around the clock and take automated action to improve fleet safety and performance in real time.

With continual automated feedback and system-driven coaching, Tourmo AI helps fleet enterprises minimize risk, deploy and scale existing safety programs as needed, and ensure drivers are always properly trained and equipped to reduce risks when out on the road.

Tourmo provides the positive reinforcement and feedback drivers need while encouraging them to participate in gamification and improve their driving skills without needing intervention. When the system detects a pattern of unsafe driving behavior, it will request a supervisor for further assistance.

A few example benefits of using the Tourmo Driving Behavior product include:

• Up to 25% fewer accidents
• Up to 10% reduction in insurance premiums
• Up to 10% reduction in fuel and/or maintenance costs
• Up to 50% increase in driver engagement and satisfaction
• Increase in driver retention

Tourmo AI: Supporting Next-Gen Driver Safety Programs

You can implement a commercial driver safety program that promotes safe driving practices and establishes a safety culture that earns the respect of your employees and customers by utilizing the solutions listed above that address common challenges.

If you want to lower your insurance premiums, improve the efficiency of your coaching process, or find a more effective way to manage risk in your fleet, Tourmo can help. Our AI-powered solutions can help your organization dramatically reduce risk while increasing the value of your existing fleet management solutions.