How does your company promote safety?

You just answered your own question with your defense. Find a way to train guys how to handle all those situations you just posted or let them figure it out through experience which is the prerequisite here. For what it's worth I have done the skid pad to learn about slides and simulators can give you the steer blow out.

 

Some just have a long day and ready to go to bed so they're not thinken when they back.Start calling these drivers in and give them warnings.Start making them pay for the accidents.

 

Could always do what SNI does, yearly reviews of each driver, whips, chains, and a couple iron maidens in every OC. Not to mention a nearly hive-mind setup when training...

...just kidding about the yearly reviews.

 

My company sends out occasional QC messages informing us of drivers who were fired for stupidity. For example:

"This week there were two drivers fired for excessive speeding. One was ticketed for 67 in a 45 and the other was ticked for 40 in a 25. Please pay attention to all speed limit signs. This is something that is completely within your control."

These messages (which don't give names, truck #s, or any identifying info) help keep all of us on our toes because it reminds us of the consequences of negligence, or outright disregard, to safety.

 

promote safety????????????????????


bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahah
Oh that's funny, tell us another one.

 

In my mind safety starts at the top and works it's way down. You've got to make safety EASY. If you pay by the mile, spending time on safety reduces what a driver gets paid by the hour. If you spend 15 minutes during your day to do "safety stuff" (pre-trip, GOAL, thinking!) then your job took 15 minutes longer and you got paid the same. Find a way to renumerate for safety. Fix safety related items first, so that the drivers see that safety is actually important to the office. A driver should clean his own truck, but having someone go out every now and then and clean mirrors, tighten the bolts on the mirrors, change windshield wipers etc and then say to the driver "hey, we tidied up your mirrors, wipers, glass, etc, is there anything else we can do to make it easier to drive/not hit things/etc" It's not that the driver couldn't do these things themsevles, but it sets an example and reminds them that the little things can make a difference. It's one thing for the office to say "we care about safety" and it's another to find even trivial things to do that which help. Good ice-scrapers, yard lighting, company provided gloves (very cheap but nothing says "I love you, now GOAL" like warm hands right?)

A good way to keep people from speeding is to remind them if they're paid hourly that they're losing money if they speed. I really hammer that in. People go to work because they want money. We also on occasion have a few beers and watch russian truck crash videos on youtube and discuss how dumb people are and usually it comes down to speed causing the real bad ones. If people had been driving appropriate speeds, the accident wouldn't have happened. I also make sure to point out the guys in the videos that didn't get involved in the crash, and how they where driving slowly usually.

We also have a culture of sneaking up on guys in the yard when they're backing up and pounding on the side of the truck in their blind spot to freak each other out. People get out and look because they don't want to get laughed at. Finding ways to leverage peer pressure and shame.

If someone doesn't respond to being helped, having a good example set, bad-habit shaming, money and peer pressure then they're not worth the effort.

 

Oh, another thing. Route planning. If you give a driver 13.5 hours of driving to do in 13.5 hours, and then there's traffic, the extra time has to come from somewhere. Give them 10 hours of work to do and tell them if it takes 11 hours and they spend the extra hour doing GOAL and pre-trips and double checking mirrors, adjusting mirrors and reading the map or going and getting a dock guy to back them up that's ok you'll have less problems. When dispatch makes your life insane safety is sometimes the first thing to go. That's also an approach that drivers appreciate and will respond to. Productivity and safety are often at odds. That may be a fact that some of the people on your safety meeting/board/focus group thing might not like but it's a fact. Productivity loss is often cheaper than an accident however but that's for the insurance people and bean counters to figure out.

If they're looking for a way to increase safety without spending any time or money they're out of luck. There's no free lunch which I think is what the more sarcastic posts on here are trying to say in their own way.