Your Scores Are Just the Beginning

Several years ago, I saw a post here on LinkedIn by Kevin Burns that said "Today I use our current safety results as a baseline of the least we are capable of." I had recently taken over as Safety Director for a company that had a number of CSA Alerts, and accidents were on the rise. I read this line by Mr. Burns and thought: He's right, these numbers are as bad as I am allowing things to get. As I moved forward in my new career, I realized that obsessing over the numbers was not enough. It wasn't enough to just track accidents and violations. It wasn't enough to tell everyone that improvement was needed. It wasn't enough to just take corrective action after something bad happened.

As a police officer and criminology student, I learned that tracking crime rates and making arrests was only the beginning. What really needed to be done was to understand behaviors, attitudes, and conditions that led to criminal activity. Understanding safety and compliance is no different. If you want to keep bad things from happening, you need to understand why those bad things happen!

Why are we getting so many speeding and HOS violations? Is it because drivers are pushing too hard to make more money? Is it because dispatchers are putting too much pressure on getting "hot loads" delivered? Drivers who don't wear their seatbelts are making decisions to be unsafe and to break the law the second their truck is put into gear. Are you addressing it?

What about vehicle maintenance violations? Are you addressing violations that are clearly preventable such as tire tread depth? Besides the driver, is anyone else regularly looking over your fleet's (yes, even the equipment of owner operators) maintenance conditions? Are you only looking at the number of accidents, or are you taking the time to analyze and understand the behaviors behind the specific types of accidents your fleet is having?

Safety isn't about a number. Safety is about understanding the conditions and behaviors that either lead to, or help to prevent, unfortunate incidents. The number just gives us a quantitative way to track our progress. What are you doing to understand and change behaviors and conditions in your company? It's true, your current scores and accident numbers are just the baseline of what you are capable of. The question is: what are you willing to do to raise the bar?