As the safety manager, you want great driver behavior and the fewest number of incidents possible. But…a coaching program built on incomplete data, inconsistency, and punishment often backfires. A bad coaching program doesn’t improve safety. Instead, it damages your drivers’ trust and lowers the same accountability you’re trying to establish.
A culture that promotes safety is transparent and takes a balanced approach. This is why GPS Insight platforms integrate AI and performance scorecards to promote fairness.
Three Failures of Poor Coaching Programs
A good coaching program is also supported by data. Here is where many safety programs fail:
- Presumed Guilty: When coaching is based only on basic alerts like hard braking, drivers can feel it’s unfair. Was the hard brake due to reckless driving…or avoiding a car cutting them off? Without video context from a smart camera, no one really knows.
- Inconsistent Feedback: If managers coach differently, everyone has different rules. A bad program relies on subjective observation. However, a good program uses AI to consistently measure objective behaviors like distraction (phone, eating) and speeding. With our solutions, we even provide a DriverStar Scorecard.
- Focusing Only on the Negatives: A program that only sends alerts about bad behavior creates a negative Big Brother culture. Celebrate the positive! Our advanced systems can detect and reward safe driving.
Without smart camera footage to prove driver innocence, your company defaults to paying expensive insurance claims. Your program needs to not only protect your drivers, but also company finances. Plus, drivers are unhappy at a company that treats them unfairly. If coaching is based on poor data, drivers may quit. You then have the costs of recruitment, hiring, and training…which all add up.
Stopping Driving Incidents Before They Start
The good platform tries to intervene in the moment, while a bad one just reacts long afterward. Our solutions are designed to deliver real-time audio alerts directly to the driver in the cab. Consider:
- The system knows when a driver is distracted and at what speed. For example, the alert for “Looking Down” is sent if the vehicle is traveling at greater than 15 mph and the driver has been distracted for a few seconds. If the distraction continues for more than 10 seconds, the alert will repeat.
- For high-risk behaviors like “Looking at Phone” and “Talking on Phone,” the alert is sent if the vehicle is traveling at greater than 5 mph. This feedback can help correct dangerous behavior before it turns into an incident.
- These in-cab warnings reinforce the standards set by your DriverStar Scorecard, so drivers have a chance to self-correct before the incident is even recorded on their profile.
Want to explore a bit more? Here are some additional details on in-cab alerts from our Help Center.
Real Driver Behavior Correction from Our Customer
Using GPS Insight, Wake Electric created both a competitive and positive environment. Drivers were won over by our technology since the leadership successfully turned it into a gamification of safety. What does that mean? Instead of mandatory compliance, the drivers wanted to win their friendly competition.
“It’s amazing how this suddenly became a gamification of safety…that: ‘I want to be the number one, I want to be the best driver, I want to be the safest driver’,” said Don Bowman, vice president of engineering and operations at Wake Electric.
How GPS Insight Influences the Role of Safety Manager
Safety is a shared responsibility…but you’re the leader. With data and an integrated platform, you can coach, provide self-correction tools, and track improvement. Instead of punishment, you’re creating professional development opportunities.
Are you ready for the solution that works? Get a demo today.
