Here’s an emotional story from our favorite fleet safety expert, Adam Lang, that explores the impact of proper driver safety tracking:
A newly married driver and his wife came into my office to fill out paperwork so his wife could accompany him on his next trip.
It was very common in the fleet.
While he was signing documents his wife watched the TV in the office.
It was playing a video featuring our CSA scores, clips of amazing defensive driving, and the drivers with the highest GreenZone Scores.
She took it all in.
She then turned and asked her husband two questions:
- “What’s a GreenZone Score?”
- “What’s YOUR GreenZone Score?”
The driver stopped for a moment and said it was the score the cameras gave them based on driving.
He wasn’t sure what his score was.
His wife turned to me and asked if she could see his score.
I looked at the driver, “Mind if I share it?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
There was a tinge of dread in his eye, but being a married man myself, I understood that glance could have filled a novel.
As I showed his statistics and overall GreenZone score for the month prior, she peppered more questions.
- “What’s a good score?”
- “What does a low score mean?”
We watched some of the alerts (all with the driver’s approval). His score was pretty low compared to the fleet average.
She then said something I will never forget.
“I don’t think I want to ride in a truck with you if this is how you drive.”
I froze. A million things ran through my mind. I did not want to create problems for this newly married couple.
But the reality was that this driver had been getting low scores for some time and had been coached by several members of the team. Some modest improvement took root, but there was always a backslide.
The driver then turned to his wife and said “I can do better. And, for you, I will.”
She asked him if she could keep tabs on his score. He told her about the app and agreed to let her see it at any point.
She ended up going on the trip for about a week.
Needless to say, I was curious about this driver’s performance for the trip, so I took a little time to occasionally monitor it.
For everyone that’s read up to this point, you may have already guessed what I saw…nearly perfect GreenZone Scores.
Little to no risk.
This was someone who would have been flagged for a recognition call.
The next week, his performance stayed elevated. Same with the week after.
After a month, the driver came in to talk with me. As I stuck my hand out to shake his hand, he gave me a bear hug.
He said the system changed the way he drove, he just needed to pay attention to it. He also put a small photo of his wife on his dashboard so he always feels like he’s driving with her.
Emotions are powerful, and sometimes we don’t care enough about ourselves to make the best decisions. Sometimes there is someone in our lives that help us come to that decision on our own.
