“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
If they’re banning txeitng and driving they should also ad a few more things that you see every day operating an iPod while driving.Eating and driving.Putting on Make up and Driving.Getting Dressed and Driving (I’m not even joking I see someone trying to put on/take off articles of clothing daily while driving over the demers overpass)Ban as much as you like, it won’t stop people which is the sad reality. How many people do you see using their cell phones in Minnesota still? I’ve even seen the police themselves using their phone! Don’t give me they have some special miraculous training that suddenly gives them a special super power to be able to operate a cell phone and drive at the same time. It doesn’t happen/exist, its called experience, and anyone can obtain that with time.Speaking of people who can’t drive. How about we make people actually learn to drive vehicles. How many people fail to use a blinker to change lanes? How many people feel its OK to make a left hand turn and turn into the far lane without making a second lane change? Then you get pissed off at me when I turn into the right lane where you wanted to be Tough luck, get in the lane you’re supposed to be turning into. You aren’t driving a 53 Tractor trailer, you’re driving a Tahoe or some pointless SUV in town.Fix basic driving skills then lets move on to other things I think it should be a nice sweeping ordinance.