By Wayne Smolda, CEO and Founder

Every Springtime we all head off to the annual NAFA Conference and name the new year’s Fleet Manager of the Year  and also the senior organizational leader who has helped the fleet management profession as the Fleet Executive of The Year. I am happy to announce the name of the winner and have CEI and DriverCare be the co-sponsor of this award with Fleet Financials magazine.

I personally do not choose the winner, but I am proud to announce the name at the opening breakfast meeting of the NAFA Conference. I will, however, take credit for promoting and formulating the nature and cause for this award. To me this recognizes the efforts of those not in fleet management who have served as a guiding mentor to fleet managers whose duty is to oversee the fleet transportation needs of their organizations. Fleet managers can’t arbitrarily decide the issues for fleet within their organizations. They need the counsel and input from senior leaders who shape fleet strategy as it pertains to the goals of the entity to be served.

Fleet executives provide representation as well to the very top of the organization so that the fleet management practices performed for the entity can be best appreciated to those at the top of the organization. Generally, the fleet executives who are vetted for this award are also responsible for other important areas of management, and this award is an expression of our appreciation for their efforts.

This will be our 11th year of presenting someone with the “Red Badge of Courage”. I look forward to making this award for many years to come. It truly is a duty that I and our teams at CEI and DriverCare are very proud to be a part of. Congrats to all who participate and especially to our named winners.

By Wayne Smolda, CEO and Founder

Vehicle entertainment centers substantially decrease driver safety

Imagine that we, as managers and parents, could decide what kinds of equipment would be in the vehicles our employees and children drive. Would the list include TVs, computer-like dashboards with many complex menus, and a portable phone booth? I think we’d place these on the Don’t Install list.

But I’ve got news for you: those items are being integrated into our vehicles today, and these choices are being made by — yes, you’ve got it — managers and parents. And while they are acceding to decisions by automakers who are fighting the battle to increase market share, they’re forgetting about the unintended consequences of all this ingenuity at the fingertips of their fleet drivers and our children.

Why do we modern humans ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences when formulating decisions like these? Most likely it’s because we live our lives under the sunny skies of “it won’t happen to me”. We allow ourselves to become blinded by the excitement of all the new things we can do with this electronic technology, rather than considering what could actually happen to us. Hey, I include myself in this mix.
And think about this: while each of us firmly believes “it won’t be me” who will crash his or her vehicle while playing with these technologies, we forget the possibility that “the other guy” may be doing the same thing and about to crash into us. After all, when was the last time you drove down a road in zero traffic?

The prospect that another driver’s attention could be completely absorbed by one or more gadgets should scare the wits out of us all. And it should make us all feel equally insecure about sending our employees and children onto the roadways to dodge all those “other guys”. You’re not even safe if you’re just walking on a sidewalk – distraction doesn’t make any exceptions.

I’m horrified, but at the same time fascinated, that so many people find it acceptable to convert their vehicles into mobile entertainment centers, just because they can. To me, it’s as if everybody decided to take up bungee cord jumping because bungee cord manufacturers spent millions putting jump centers everywhere and on advertising to make it look like everybody just has to do it.

Frankly, I’m feeling less safe on the road with every announcement about some new entertainment feature available for our vehicles. The Law of Unintended Consequences is real. So is the Law of Averages. The more technology we admit into our vehicles, the sooner more of us are going become its potential poster children for them.

By Wayne Smolda, CEO and Founder

This is the third in my series of blogs about breaking our addiction to driving while using a cell phone, what I call “Driving Under Addiction,” “DUA” for short. The solution may yet take the same path our society took toward drunk driving.

When I first got my license in the 1960s, there wasn’t the big stigma we associate today with drinking and driving.  I don’t even remember alcoholism being spoken about as a disease, much less a scourge on our highways. To me and my friends, getting together at a bar or party naturally meant drinking and then driving back home. It’s what everybody did, and while people took notice when a drunk driver killed himself or somebody else, it was regarded as unfortunate, but nobody made a national issue out of it or tied it back to their own behavior.

It wasn’t until 1980, when Mothers Against Drunk Driving  (MADD) was founded, that people started taking notice [Read more...]

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...]