Transforming Vehicle & Driver Safety Series - Part 1 - Observations & Considerations

By Ken Creager, President & CEO

We regularly hear of incidents caused by drivers who were distracted, inattentive, or otherwise preoccupied with other activities while driving. Historically, impaired drivers, teenage or inexperienced drivers and commercial drivers pushing to make deadlines seemed to be the common cause of most traffic accidents. However, today there are a host of other dangers that  contribute to an ever-increasing hazard on our nation’s highways, city roads and neighborhood streets.

At the beginning of this paper, we mentioned that drivers might affect you even if you’re not behind the wheel. How so? Did you know that the average weight of a family vehicle is rapidly closing in on 4000 lbs.? And that’s before we add in the weight of the driver and passengers, as well as the cargo we carry. Commercial vehicles which are also growing in size and cargo weight also present another credible threat. Whether at the wheel, or an innocent bystander, you are susceptible to the dangers of today’s multi-tasking drivers.

We begin to understand the gravity of the situation we face when we consider the human loss and injury, damage caused to lives and property, irreparable harm to a company’s reputation and the litigation associated with inattentive driving. Nobody hopes to have accidents happen, however statistics don’t lie and we remain even more susceptible as we push further into our technological and entertainment intensive lifestyle.