Attention Truck Fleets: FMCSA Cell Phone Restrictions Swing into Effect

Beginning this month, commercial truck carriers will notice that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has updated the safety ‘snapshot’ it uses for its Unsafe Driving BASIC (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category) to include violations reflected in the agency’s new cell phone regulations. That rule which came into effect January 3, 2012, prohibits commercial drivers from using hand-held mobile phones while driving.

Here’s a summary of the changes:

Added Carrier SMS Unsafe Driving BASIC Violations

Section

Violation Shown on Roadside Inspection Report

Violation Group Description

Violation Severity Weight
177.804(b) Failure to comply with 49 CFR 392.80 – Texting while Oper a CMV – Placardable HM Texting 10
177.804(c) Fail to comply with 392.82 – Using Mobile Phone while Oper a CMV – HM Phone Call 10
392.80(a) Driving a commercial motor vehicle while texting Texting 10
392.82(a)(1) Using a hand-held mobile telephone while operating a CMV Phone Call 10
392.82(a)(2) Allowing or requiring driver to use a hand-held mobile tel while operating a CMV Phone Call 10

 

For anyone familiar with these rules, note that cell phone violations are weighted with a 10 — which is serious as it gets.

Because of the FMCSA regulations the new hand-held phone ban modifies, it automatically became part of the Unsafe Driving BASIC when it came into effect last month, so violations have both financial and CSA implications. Specifically adding these five cell phone violations to the safety ‘snapshot’ it sends to motor carriers shows how seriously the FMCSA is taking this new rule.

To minimize the impact of these news rules on your business — learn how you can automatically promote safe and legal use of cell phones while your employees are driving on the job.

Image via ats_500

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Five Reasons Why Distracted Driving Is Not Just a Teen Problem

Judging from this morning’s anti-texting while driving segment on NBC’s TODAY show — everyone understands that cell phone use while driving is a growing epidemic among teenage drivers.

What few people, however, understand (and what TODAY‘s segment failed to mention) is that the distracted driving epidemic is not exclusive to teen drivers.  Adults are just as much a part of the problem – a fact that creates serious financial risk and liability for America’s employers.

Here’s five reasons why cell phone use while driving is much more than just a “teen problem”:

1.  The Data Doesn’t Lie:  In June 2010, the Pew Research Center conducted a study which found that One in four (27%) American adults say they have texted while driving, the same proportion as the number of driving age teens (26%) who say they have texted while driving.  Also, the study found that 61% of adults say they have talked on their cell phones while they were behind the wheel.  That is considerably greater than the number of 16- and 17-year-olds (43%) who have talked on their cells while driving.

2.  Cell Phone-Toting Adults Teach Teens to Drive:  A nationwide survey commissioned by State Farm of 517 sets of teen drivers and their parents found that 61% of teens reported their parents were distracted by their cell phone or other electronic device at least once while teaching them to drive; 29% said their parents were distracted “sometimes, often or all the time” while driving.

3.  Cell Phone Use While Driving Increases Crash Risk-Regardless of Age:  After examining the behavior of drivers over more than six million miles of road, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) found that texting drivers were 23 times more likely to be in a crash or near-crash than non-distracted drivers – regardless of age.  The study also showed that texting drivers involved in ‘safety-critical’ events had their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds–enough time to travel the length of a football field when driving at 55 mph.  By contrast, talking on a cell phone, which allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road, represented an increased risk of only 1.3 times that of a nondistracted driver.

4.  Vehicle Crashes Are #1 Killer of Teens *AND* Employees:  While it’s true that motor vehicle crashes are the number-one cause of death for U.S. teens — it’s also true that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of workplace fatalities.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 39% of occupational fatalities in 2010 involved motor vehicle incidents.

5.  Vehicle Crashes Have Massive Human and Economic Costs:  The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that motor vehicle crashes involving employees costs employers $60 billion annually.  Furthermore, NHTSA also reports that fatal crashes cost employers $500,000 per, and nonfatal crashes with injury cost $74,000 per.  Additionally, a recent AAA study found that fatal car crashes cost society $6 million each.  Under the theory of vicarious liability, companies whose employees are involved in distracted driving crashes can be held legally and financially liable.  Many companies have already paid millions in damages, as you can read in this white paper.

So while the issue of teen distracted driving *is* critically important — so, too, is the issue of *adult* distracted driving.  Companies especially face significant risk and liability as a result of employee use of phones while driving on the job.  Each and every day there are 18 million commercial fleet vehicles on American roads.  These vehicles are driven by cell phone-toting adults (not teens) and every single one of them is tempted to text, email or browse while on the road.

Regardless of whether you’re a parent or employer — it’s time to promote safe, legal and responsible use of phones while driving.

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[Guest Post] Can Traffic Cameras Make Dangerous Intersections Safer?

You’re driving down the road, approaching an intersection when the light turns yellow. You speed up to make the light, and just as you cross the line, it turns red. Suddenly, you see a small flash out of the corner of your eye. You just got caught by a traffic camera.

Soon after that incident, you’ll receive a ticket in the mail, usually with the option to just go ahead and pay it via postal mail- or  you have the choice to show up in court to contest it. But fighting it won’t do you much good when there’s photo evidence. The question is, does getting caught by a camera make you think twice before you run a red light again?

Most people would say yes, if only to avoid having to pay fines or having points added to their driving record, as is the case in many states including Oklahoma. But others feel a camera mounted on a traffic light isn’t as accurate as an actual police officer. Some even claim it’s an invasion of privacy – although I think that’s a difficult argument to make when you’re traveling on public roads.

Opposition to traffic cameras, or red-light cameras, often stems from a lack of understanding of how they work. Most intersections using this technology will have four cameras, one on each corner. The cameras are connected both to triggers in the intersection and to a computer.

When a car passes a trigger when the light is red, it trips the camera, which takes two photos—one of the vehicle just over the line, and one of the vehicle in the middle of the intersection—and sends it to the computer, which records the date and time of the incident. More often than not, the cameras are more accurate than police officers at detecting red light runners.

Here in Oklahoma, we have more than our share of dangerous intersections. In Oklahoma City, Pennsylvania Avenue and Memorial Road has been called the deadliest intersection, with 94 crashes recorded there in a single year.

As of February 2010, the most dangerous intersection in Tulsa was at U.S. Highway 169 and 51st street, according to the Tulsa Police Department (TPD). Between 2007 and that time, police responded to 280 crashes at that one location.

Traffic camera detractors may say just put more traffic cops on the roads to decrease accidents. But the solution isn’t that simple. Due to budget cuts, TPD had to lay off many of its officers, and even temporarily suspended its traffic units altogether. In fact, TPD will no longer respond to non-injury crashes.

This brings up another interesting potential use of red-light cameras—liability. Let’s say someone runs a red light and hits your car, but neither you nor the other driver are injured. If the police have adopted a stance of only responding when there’s an injury – there’s no police report generated at the scene. That means you don’t get a chance to tell *your* side of the story to anyone. How are you going to prove who was at fault so that the other driver’s insurance will cover your damages?

And what if the other driver leaves the scene? That traffic camera photo may be your only salvation when you’re the victim of a hit-and-run driver. This would be especially true if you were a pedestrian hit by a car that ran a red light and then drove away.

Additionally, the increasing prevalence of cell phone-related distracted driving means that ‘accidental’ red light running could become more common, as drivers enter intersections against the light simply because they are not paying attention. And that is behavior that can have truly tragic consequences, as the deaths of Joe Teater and Martha Ovalle show.

Not being able to recover damages creates a liability problem for both individual drivers and those who drive as part of their job – meaning employers could be left footing the bill for non-employee drivers’ erratic behavior. Until cities can afford to have enough traffic cops on duty, or better yet, drivers slow down and use more caution on the roads, traffic cameras may be the best way to deter reckless driving, at least in dangerous intersections.

Noble McIntyre is the senior partner and owner of McIntyre Law, a firm staffed by experienced Oklahoma car crash lawyers.

Images via brewbooks, Noble McIntyre

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Driving Change: Rewards Encourage Employees to Behave Better Behind the Wheel

“Drive safely, win a car!”

That promise sounds like the definition of too good to be true – but for one Ontario, CA-based truck driver, it really was that easy.

The Yanke Group of Companies recently announced it has awarded owner-operator Sasa Gavranovic with a brand-new Ford F-150 as his prize for participating in its “Be the One” Safety Program, reports Today’s Trucking. Gavronovic was one of 473 drivers to enter the yearly giveaway, which also offers participants the chance to win monthly cash prizes in addition to the annual grand prize of a new pick-up truck.

Yanke’s safety program, created in 2009, involves everything from safety breakfasts to social media – but perhaps most interesting is its focus on information and data:

“While Yanke said that the program’s main focus is ‘safety,’ it specifically looks at personal attitudes, behaviours and core values, and how that impacts each workday. A critical component of this, Yanke said, is information sharing, emphasizing the awareness of potential emotional, financial and physical loss that might occur.”

It’s hardly a novel idea to suggest that you have to win “hearts and minds” before you’ll see any change in behavior. By both offering enticing incentives and leveraging data on potential risks, Yanke is cleverly changing its staff’s approach to safety. So while it may cost Yanke $10,000 in cash and another $50,000 for the car to run this program every year – how much are they saving by improving safety and reducing crash expenses?

Surely thousands of dollars-  and maybe even millions, if we take into account potential plaintiff actions following crashes involving Yanke-employed drivers.

Coupling data on potential risk with rewards to encourage drivers to change their behavior is exactly the kind of safety program we were aiming to support as we developed our innovative cell phone use analytics service, FleetSafer Vision. By providing fleet operators with rich analytics on how employees use their mobile phones while driving, we enable companies to reward their safest drivers – and encourage safer habits – or identify risky drivers in order to fix the problems.

Safety improvements don’t come cheap – but as Yanke’s success shows, paying for one pick-up truck a year could turn out to be a relative bargain.

Image via TruckNews.com

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[Survey] What Do YOU Think About the FMCSA Ban on Commercial Drivers’ Hand-Held Mobile Phone Use?

It’s been a few weeks since the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) new rule banning interstate truck and bus drivers from using hand-held mobile phones came into effect. And now that the rule’s effective, both individual drivers AND their employers now face stiff penalties, including thousands of dollars in fines and potential black marks on the company CSA record, if they fail to comply with the ban.

Here at ZoomSafer, we want to know what you think about the new rule. Do you think it will enhance highway safety – or will it make commercial fleet drivers’ and operators’ lives more difficult for little benefit? What kind of steps, if any, does your company plan to take to ensure compliance?

Take our two-minute survey now – and as a thank-you for sharing your thoughts, enter to win a FREE Apple iPad2!

Get started now!

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