Did you know that the seventh most dangerous job in America according to a fatal occupational injury census is truck driving? We should not be entirely surprised by this considering trucking and transportation accidents are the number one cause of on-the-job fatalities. In normal years, 500+ truck drivers will sadly perish while on the job.
With that in mind, it should be the duty of employers within the transportation sector to take every possible step to ensure the safety of their truck drivers. Conducting suitable risk assessments, ensuring that vehicles are fit for purpose, work-related journeys are safe, and vehicle operators are equipped with all the tools they need to operate their vehicles safely, come recommended.
A practical way of achieving this is through telematics. A fully integrated telematics solution facilitates the collection of valuable vehicle and driver information which, in turn, can be used to analyze vehicle performance, driver behavior, crash data and much more.
Equally as important is putting policies and procedures in place to guide employees through the company’s expectations of safe road use, the risks involved, the consequences of those risks, and the requirement to manage and reduce those risks and consequences. That is why today we will explore the essential elements that should be included in such a policy and the benefits thereof.
After all, it is one thing to invest in a technology for the sake of doing so, but it is another thing to have policies and procedures in place to help guide the use of that technology. New things for the sake of new things is not always effective without a plan in place to utilize them.
Who Is Using Telematics?
Thanks to the ELD mandate, nearly all trucking fleets today use telematics in one way or another. With fleets more readily and frequently adopting telematics, telematics policies have become very important since they help establish clear and defined expectations for any employee that makes use of the company’s telematics devices and its supporting systems.
Where telematics is in place but no policy currently exists, it’s crucial to draw up suitable policies and set a deadline by which all drivers are required to review and sign it before they are allowed to drive a company vehicle. Also, newly appointed drivers should be asked to review, sign and date a telematics policy as soon as they begin employment.
The essential elements a good telematics vender has will help fleets prepare for a smooth transition. Motor carriers should find a partner who has extensive experience in preparing telematics policies for many fleets around the world. Based on this experience, we have found that the following elements should always be included in a telematics policy for U.S. fleets.
How to Create Policy
First, you must define the purpose. Determine the reason your company is implementing telematics. Explain why telematics is important and how it will benefit not just the company but also the drivers.
Some of the most common reasons include compliance with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) final ruling, which requires the use of ELDs for drivers of commercial motor vehicles to record their Hours of Service (HOS), and the improvement of the fleet’s safety and efficiency.
Then you want to make sure you properly outline roles and responsibilities. Various stakeholders are involved in the successful rollout of a telematics policy, and it’s important that these roles are clearly defined. The last thing you want to do is sow confusion with a new procedure that is meant to clear things up.
Senior leadership should be responsible for establishing clear expectations and accountability to ensure that all employees understand and adhere to the requirements of this policy. When people are looking to the leadership team for guidance, the men and women in charge need to be able to give it.
Line management or supervisors should review the policy alongside all applicable employees to ensure that they understand what is expected of them and the potential consequences if violations were to occur. In some ways, these members of management are the most important part of the process.
Finally, employees need to understand and adhere to the expectations as outlined in the policy. Your front-line employees represent the vanguard of your efforts. If they are not ready, then things fall apart before it even reaches management’s ears.
Position the ELD Mandate and HOS
If it is relevant to your fleet, it’s important to explain the ELD Mandate, its purpose and key provisions. Many fleets also include the HOS provisions here as well. Consider that the ELD Mandate is law of the land. If your people don’t know it inside and out, you are going to get caught flat-footed.
Again, this is an opportunity to communicate how important compliance is and the benefits it provides to truck drivers and the fleet. Truck driver safety is, after all, the main objective of the ELD Mandate and HOS rules. Even as they change and evolve with the times, their core function is to ensure safety in the trucking and transportation sectors.
It is critical that fleet managers clearly explain who must comply. Describe who must comply with the policy so that everyone is clear on their role. Employee truck drivers, contracted truck drivers and temporary truck drivers should all be expected to comply. The types of vehicles that must comply (both inter- and intrastate) should also be made clear.
Also make sure you enforce proper recording of time. Educate drivers about the language and terms used in your telematics system so that they understand what each type of time means. This is the language they will need to speak to enforcement officers.
Look for a telematics solution that delivers on the following factors:
- On-Duty Time;
- Driving Time;
- Off-Duty Time;
- Sleeper Berth;
- Oilfield Exemption;
- Adverse Driving Conditions;
- Personal Conveyance, and
- Emergency Driving Exception.
Each factor should be clearly defined with no overlap or ambiguity so that truck drivers know how to accurately record their time in the telematics system.
Telematics System Access and Use
As is the case with roles and responsibilities, it’s important to define key fob types. It must be determined who receives the key fobs, what the charges are for lost key fobs, and who the system administrators are. Sharing of key fobs or admin logins should be prohibited.
Make sure you also clearly explain system use. Truck drivers need to know how to log in and out of the system, and what information is recorded while the system is in use. Motor carriers using in-cab video should also consider including details on what is recorded and how the data is used. There is more than just privacy and performance at stake.
Many fleets implementing in-cab video are including longer, more detailed sections in their telematics policies to put drivers’ minds at ease about the use of in-cab video and what it is recording. Make it clear to truck drivers that managers are not monitoring live video from inside vehicles, but only reviewing recorded video when a driving event is triggered.
While in-cab video has proved to be extremely valuable, success relies heavily on truck driver acceptance of the concept. Since many drivers perceive in-cab video as an invasion of privacy, taking the approach described above is essential to gaining driver acceptance.
Ultimately, drivers own their logs and must approve any edits made by supervisors. So, it is critical to define the process of how logs can be edited – including how and when it is appropriate to over-ride the automatic collection and recording of data. The chain of command and proper data hand-off procedures should be clearly outlined.
Final Thoughts on Implementation
In the end, you’ve got to emphasize compliance. A key provision here is: “The use of this telematics system in vehicles so equipped is not optional.” Explain here again why compliance is important, and why the company has decided to implement telematics.
This section should also include a list of compliance-related items that drivers need to keep in their vehicles, such as blank paper logs in the event of a system failure, and a procedural document showing what to do in the case of a roadside inspection.
Also make sure to define system administrators. Clarify upfront who the system admins are according to role and not name. This will provide drivers with reassurance about who has access to their information and who they can contact if required.
And, as always, be transparent about truck driver performance. Explain how driver performance data will be used. Typically, fleets explain that the data assists with counselling drivers on safe driving behaviors and techniques.
The objective of a telematics policy is to ensure that drivers understand why the fleet is implementing the system, how the system works, and why they must use it. Ideally, this is only one step in a long and ongoing communications process with drivers. The first time they hear about your fleet’s new telematics system should not be when they are handed the policy for review and signature.
Remember, driver buy-in is essential to the success of any telematics initiative. Look at the development and implementation of your new telematics policy as an opportunity to convey to drivers that the company’s top priority is to keep them safe.