April is distracted driving awareness month, an initiative put forth by the National Safety Council (NSC). As someone who has personally and significantly been impacted by a severe motor vehicle collision, which resulted in the death of two people (one of them my husband), I do believe in both the dangers and the opportunities to minimize these dangers.
The reality is we all both know its dangerous and yet fall victim to the many distractions when we are behind the wheel. We routinely rationalize:
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Clearly this issue impacts just about everyone, as we are highly reliant on personal vehicles as our primary means of transportation. However many employees are also traveling the roadways as a part of their job (including their daily commute, and breaks) which makes this an important issue for employers as well.
So what can you do? The NSC offers a growing toolkit of resources to help workplaces promote distraction free driving (links below). Locally the Arizona Builders Alliance (Southern AZ) will focus its monthly safety committee meeting on this topic as well. In this meeting we will be discussing the challenges of keeping employees focused on driving, hear real stories from people impacted, review of the many resources available to extend the learnings from this meeting to our workplaces and our families.
One simple first step is to make the NSC Just Drive Pledge. Although the act itself is simple, complying with the pledge may be more difficult for all the bullet points listed above. Taking the pledge and then encouraging others to do the same, is one small step we can make towards changing our current culture.
If you are ready to help reduce the injuries and fatalities from vehicle collisions and distracted driving here are links to resources which can help:
McCraren Compliance offers safe equipment operation and distracted driving training. More information please contact us at info@mccrarencompliance.com