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Oregon Truck DISPATCH
www.ORtrucking.orgINSURANCE
In today’s world,
safety culture, safety scores and
safety discounts have evolved into an endless array of
buzzwords that find their way onto calendars, posters
and safety manuals. The pursuit of someone else’s
definition of “safe” has left most of us exhausted and
still feeling left short at the end of the day. I often meet
with clients to discuss frequency scores, loss ratios,
severity impacts, trends, etc. We pour over reports,
pie charts, and graphs and columns in every color and
shape imaginable in an attempt to determine whether
they’ve obtained a “safe culture” within the fleet.
Controlling your own Destiny
By Jennifer King, WHA Insurance
In an industry wrought with endless regulation, we ask
if a “safety culture” could ever truly be “obtained” by a
statistical illustration? Don’t get me wrong, these
scores and factors and pertinent. Your loss ratios and
accident frequencies very much provide a starting
bench mark to help measure the effectiveness of your
safety program—let’s not beat around the bush: your
loss ratios will determine how much your carrier is
going to charge you at renewal. In the end, many safety
officers run their hands through their hair, grab more
coffee, revamp their safety policies and ask me to make
sense of it all at the next safety or managers meeting.
We’ve picked our day; I’m there early with a Powerpoint
and venti coffee. Usually the look from the team I’m
meeting with reflects they know something is awry.
I introduce myself, my role with their company and
then it begins… “You control your own destiny,” I say.
The looks I receive in return are typically hesitant, yet
it’s clear they are intrigued. I’ve now got their attention.
Controlling your own destiny begins with defining
an accident.
Controlling your own destiny begins with
understanding Myth #1: An accident is unforeseen.
To foresee is to imagine, anticipate or predict the
probability of an occurrence. Is an accident truly
unforeseen? Is there nothing beforehand that could
indicate the probable occurrence? If you take an
accident and view it with a full vision of the event, you
will likely find the root cause; or what started the
domino tipping to your accident. Sometimes the cause
isn’t the most recent action prior to the accident.
Take for example a driver who has a broken ankle
resulting from jumping from a flatbed or warehouse
dock. It’s easy to say that the root cause was him
jumping. It’s pretty black and white. A basic 10-minute
analysis will lead to that conclusion, right? Wrong.
We must look further; dig deeper to find the true root
cause. How many times has that driver jumped from
the bed or dock? How many times was it witnessed?
If you look closer, is this a pattern among the drivers?
How often did a supervisor see this action, verbally
snap at the drivers or simply roll his eyes? We should
even take a look at what footwear the driver was wearing.
Please don’t tell me he was wearing cowboy boots!
Looking at the prior example, was this accident
unforeseen? Absolutely not. But was the root cause
truly the driver jumping off the bed of the trailer?
Or was it a pattern within the organization of not
having accountability or providing managers with the
tools to enforce best policies? If a manager or another
driver sees this behavior, do we turn a blind eye or just
mutter idiocies?
Myth
#
1
An accident is an unforeseen event resulting
in damaged equipment, injury or death.
Myth
#
2
An incident is a happening of little importance.