By: Wayne G. Smolda CEO and Founder

The lessons learned from seat belts apply to cell phones

As I wrote earlier this month, I‘m devoting a series of blogs to the critical challenge of breaking America’s addiction to using a cell phone while driving. We’ve actually had similar struggles with highway danger over the generations. One was our journey toward greater seat belt use. This was quite a social phenomenon and one that captured our attention for three decades or more.

I remember when cars didn’t have seat belts. Then, when they first started to appear in the 1970s, we drivers simply ignored them as a clumsy inconvenience.  As late as 1984, only 14 percent of all U.S. drivers were using them. The result, of course, was that people were needlessly being killed or seriously injured in traffic accidents. The tragedy prompted safety proponents to raise a cry for increased seat belt use.

This morphed into aggressive campaigns by many civic and commercial organizations to “buckle up” [Read more...]

Parents can prevent teaching distracted behavior

By Wayne G. Smolda: CEO and Founder

In December, the National Transportation Safety Board warned us about cell phone use behind the wheel, but this time the warning made a surprising characterization about the mobile devices; cell phones are as addictive as smoking.

This pronouncement all but throws in the towel in our battle about texting and phone calling while behind the wheel. It suggests we’ve lost this battle because nothing is working. We can’t encourage, scare, implore, or educate or regulate against this behavior to stop its growth.

As I write this blog, almost no one would be surprised if I were doing this from my car on my smart phone (which I’m not – but it’s possible). That’s the shocking news about us: cell phones are a national addiction, no matter what age or what we’re otherwise doing, like driving or stopped at a red light, both the same thing. And yes I do have this problem as well, and because of this I return to the “Avoiding Distracted Driving” online lesson in DriverCare several times a year to keep me on the right path.

Rationalizing away the allure to this beastly device will keep us at risk and that risk is rising. Amazingly, it now seems more important to be communicating than getting where we’re going. The basic needs of our society used to be food, shelter, and clothing. Then we added transportation. Today we re-wrote the list and added communication, and we’ve put this at the top of the list.

The issue deserves, and demands, a continuing conversation. This is why this past Sunday morning I decided [Read more...]

By Wayne Smolda, Founder and CEO
In 2011, the bad news outweighed the good, both within and beyond the world of fleet management. On the good side, finance interest rates fell to levels I haven’t seen before in my entire career. On the bad, fuel costs remained high, more the wiping out reduced interest expense savings. Then, in the “real” world there was the turmoil of the Arab Spring, the distraction of the Republican candidate debates, the weak global economy, federal budget woes, political gridlock in Washington, and the European government debt crisis. 2011 will also be remembered for the sad passing of Steve Jobs and Andy Rooney.

Most of these stories will continue to make headlines in 2012, and dangers will continue to lurk, like the possibility that fuel costs will remain high and that interest rates have only one way to go (i.e., up) from here, or that, as some economists predict, the U.S. economy will fall into a “double dip” recession. But you and I know [Read more...]

By Wayne Smolda

When we look at what we don’t know it can be very scary. Most of the U.S. driving public knows little about European fuel prices. But at a recent NAFA International Fleet Conference I became curious and learned that taxation in Europe on fuel consumption is darn-right nasty.

Case in point: In the U.K., the equivalent price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is $7.77, compared to $3.27 here in the States. That’s a drastic $4.50 more per gallon. The difference amounts to about $7,000 more per vehicle [Read more...]