Tracy Morgan’s crash on the New Jersey Turnpike in June 2014 has led to a paradigmatic milestone in vehicle safety. A Walmart trailer truck driver who rear-ended the comedian’s limo had been driving for 29 of the past 33 hours. 

Had an “electronic logging device” (ELD) been installed in the truck, the accident would not have happened. It would have alerted a fleet operator, well before the driver entered New Jersey, that he was violating federal driving hours standards.

As it happened, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed an ELD mandate years before the accident. Only right now is it publishing rules for a phased-in introduction of an ELD mandate for certain trucks.

This tale has common ingredients in advances in vehicle safety: a technology innovation is conceived years, even decades, before it comes to market; and then it’s hard not to think, “It took that long for something so obvious to be accepted?”

In fact, vehicle safety technology is penetrating the personal and the commercial vehicle markets with massive yet chaotic force making it too difficult to fully understand it or even to know what to call it. Clem Driscoll, a West Coast expert on the subject, suggested to me that it’s “mobile resource management,” a mouthful yet the best descriptor I’ve run into yet. Telematics systems, per Driscoll’s estimates, are in about 30% of all commercial fleets of at least five vehicles. Another million drivers use apps on smartphones or other portable devices to let their employers know where they are.

Public safety computer assisted dispatch (CAD) systems manage mobile human resources – cops, that is – to get to the scene as soon as possible and then remain monitored as they break up the bar fight.

He tells me that “the ROI is too compelling. This technology solves a lot of problems.” For commercial fleets, the technology provides a continuous answer to the question, “Where’s my driver?” It helps set and reset routes, reduce late deliveries, monitor vehicle maintenance and fuel usage, and – for our purposes – reduce accident frequency and severity. The major fleet management insurers offer discounts on workers’ comp and liability insurance as safety incentives.

Vehicle safety is going through a truly exciting phase. Here are a few thoughts to help one gain perspective:

Personal driving safety induces work driving safety

Work injury risk typically fails to correlate neatly with workers’ non-work risks. However, for vehicle safety, workers are receiving ever more insistent messages about their personal driving safety, which has got to impact the receptivity for vehicle safety at work. It is hard to overstate the value to work safety of the push by auto manufacturers and auto insurers behind crash avoidance, telematics and other technology features found in the 100 million lines of computer code now in personal cars.

Don’t expect conclusive proof of technology’s impact

Not all improvements lead to fewer accidents. For instance, anti-lock brakes do not appear to have prevented crashes. The exact role of increased computerization of cars in accident trends needs to be teased out.   

Crash avoidance embraces a number of tools, such as managing blind spots and front-end collision. Manufacturers of high-end cars say that crash avoidance systems result in fewer crashes.

Another advance is telematics, or passive monitoring. Telematics among personal drivers will get two big boosts in the next few years. First comes the arrival perhaps in 2016 of cheap and clever smartphone apps to monitor driving, a gift for every parent of teenagers. After that, cars will come out of the factory with embedded Google or Apple systems to support all kinds of driving aids

At work, it’s mainly about productivity.

Keep in mind the saying, “Inside every work injury, a productivity improvement struggles to get out.” When companies with fleets talk with vendors of fleet telematics, they talk about route management, fuel consumption, vehicle maintenance, working hours rules and other government regulations, as well as accident avoidance.

And the safety director is looking at more than vehicle safety.

Even among long haul truck drivers, accidents while the vehicle is underway comprise a minority of accidents. Getting in and out of the cab, unloading the truck and avoiding hazards on a destination’s site are the source of most workers’ compensation claims. For instance, among local delivery fleets in Washington state, driving accidents account for only 13% of injuries sustained by drivers, compared to 18% for falls and 34% for strains and sprains unrelated to driving.

Set ambitious targets.

Volvo is committed to reducing to zero the number of Volvo-involved deaths among drivers, passengers and pedestrians. Given the potential of new technology, employers and insurers should consider setting similar aspirational goals that get people’s attention.

Further Reading:

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, An analysis of recent improvements to vehicle safety. June 2012.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Status Report, Saving lives: Improved vehicle designs bring down death rates. January 29, 2015.