Reversing Poor Safety Records: Identifying Best Practices to Improve Fleet Safety

: Commercial motor vehicle safety is of utmost importance, as crashes involving commercial motor vehicles often result in signiﬁcant property damage, injuries, fatalities, and ﬁnancial loss for ﬂeets. However, ﬂeet managers are often unsure what strategies other ﬂeets have used to successfully improve safety. To identify best practices, researchers completed case studies with nine commercial motor vehicle ﬂeets that successfully improved their safety performance. A content analysis was performed, and the successful strategies were organized into the Haddon Matrix. Results showed that there was no one single strategy that ﬂeets used to improve safety. Instead, ﬂeets relied on a comprehensive approach focusing on pre-crash countermeasures, including addressing hiring practices, driver training, ﬂeet safety culture, safety technologies, scheduling, and maintenance. However, an enhanced safety culture and advanced safety technology were identiﬁed as critical components to their safety improvement. Results from this study may help ﬂeets understand what their peers have used to successfully improve safety and which strategies may not be as helpful.


Introduction
Each year, thousands of commercial motor vehicle (CMV) fleets struggle to improve their safety records. Over the previous five years, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) added an average of 2783 fleets to the high-risk list [1]. These fleets had two or more scores in FMCSA's Safety Management System at or above the 90th percentile for at least one month and had not received an on-site investigation within the previous 12 months (or 18 months if not a passenger carrier). Additionally, insurance companies may target fleets for safety improvement interventions. Often these interventions include an initial warning letter to notify the fleet of high crash rates (in comparison to other fleets), in-person safety audits, the creation or revision of a comprehensive plan to improve safety, and/or shutting down the fleet's operations. A fleet's safety improvement plan will address how the fleet will develop new systems or revise existing systems to reduce crash risk, and may include examining hiring criteria, revised drug and alcohol testing, scheduling and dispatching practices, vehicle maintenance, equipment purchases, safety technologies, discipline procedures, incentive and reward programs, anonymous risk reporting systems, and driver training and education. With so many options available, some fleets may have trouble knowing which strategies to implement, and they could benefit from knowing how other fleets have successfully improved safety.
There has been extensive research investigating the effectiveness of safety-improvement strategies. These can generally be grouped into the following six categories: (1) hiring policies and practices, (2) training policies and practices, (3) programs to improve safety culture, (4) driver dispatching and scheduling, (5) safety technologies, and (6) vehicle maintenance practices [2]. A summary of existing CMV research in these categories is presented below.

Driver Recruitment, Hiring, and Compensation
One of the logical ways for fleets to achieve lower crash rates is to hire safe drivers. To find the safest drivers, carriers should closely examine an applicant's driving record for recent violations or involvement in crashes [2,3]. Additionally, fleets should weigh drivers' previous experience, training, and past employer recommendations before making a hiring decision [3]. Finally, some research suggests that carriers should hire drivers with at least 2 years of driving experience during which no more than six total points accrued on the applicants' motor vehicle record, including no more than one recent crash or three moving violations [4]. Finally, research suggests that increasing driver compensation, providing health insurance, and/or compensating drivers for all hours worked are associated with significant safety improvements [5][6][7].

Driver Training
In addition to prioritizing hiring the safest drivers possible, driver education and training are critical components of a fleet's overall safety program. New hire safety education and training should include an introduction to the fleet's safety policies, technologies, hours of service (HOS) regulations, defensive driving, vehicle inspections, and behind-thewheel training or mentoring [3,4,8]. Research also suggests that recurring education and training for all drivers is important, to maintain safety [4,9,10]. This education and training may occur during periodic safety meetings, via daily/weekly/monthly safety messaging, and/or via online instruction.

Safety Culture
Research across many industries has shown that many common safety culture indicators, such as company leadership support and commitment to safety [11], frequency and quality of safety communication [12], management's perception of risk [13], workplace demands [11], job satisfaction [13], and involvement in safety-related decision making [14], are associated with workplace injuries and fatalities. Specifically related to fleets, previous research shows that safety culture is associated with driver safety performance [3,15]. Fleets with positive safety cultures often value driver safety, invest in proven safety technologies and programs, hire the safest drivers, create programs to reward and retain safe drivers, develop a safety reporting system, value and encourage driver health and wellness, and create self-accountability for safety [14,16]. Research has shown that fleets with strong safety cultures have significant commitment and dedication to safety from their executive team [4,15,17]. Additionally, research has shown that incentive/reward programs are effective at improving driver safety [3,10]. Finally, recent research has shown the importance between driver health and wellness and safety [18], and fleets that value programs to improve driver health and wellness may experience reduced crashes.

Driver Dispatching and Scheduling
Driver fatigue is a major contributor to CMV crash risk [19][20][21]. Heitmann et al. found that a risk-informed performance-based scheduling program reduced driver fatigue risk by approximately 25% and reduced crash rates by 23.5% [22]. In addition to developing schedules to reduce the risk of fatigue, Knipling and Bergoffen suggested that fleets create contracts to discourage long detention times, develop routes to maximize travel on interstate roadways, limit travel time during known instances of high traffic congestion, limit routes through existing construction zones, maximize daytime driving, and promote the use of breaks to reduce fatigue [23]. Finally, Hickman et al. showed that the use of electronic logging devices (ELD) was associated with fewer crashes and HOS violations [24].

Safety Technologies
A wide range of safety technologies is available for fleets. Some of these technologies provide safety-related alerts to drivers, while more advanced systems actually brake or steer the vehicle during a safety-related event. Although there is much research examining the effectiveness of safety technologies in light vehicles, there is little peer-reviewed research to document the effectiveness of safety technologies in CMVs. However, the research that does focus on CMVs shows that advanced safety technologies do significantly improve safety [25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Further research also shows some of these technologies have a positive return on investment with quick payback periods [25,32].

Vehicle Maintenance
Vehicle maintenance is a major focus of CMV roadside inspections. Roadside inspections are designed to identify trucks with poorly maintained safety components (i.e., brakes). Research has shown that preventative maintenance helps keep CMVs in proper working order [2,15]. Additionally, Corsi and Barnard identified best practices that fleets can use to improve vehicle safety, including the use of maintenance software to automatically track and schedule preventative maintenance, outsourcing maintenance when appropriate, and frequent vehicle inspections [3].

Study Objective
Although there is existing research documenting individual strategies that fleets may use to improve safety, there is a lack of recent research documenting comprehensive programs that fleets have used to successfully improve safety during normal operations. Thus, the goal of this study was to conduct comprehensive case studies of nine heavy vehicle fleets that achieved an improvement in their safety performance to identify the following: 1.
Safety strategies that were used to significantly improve safety performance; 2.
Safety strategies that did not improve safety performance; 3.
Barriers to implementing safety programs and strategies to overcome these barriers.

Materials and Methods
This section describes the participants, case study methodology, and analysis.

Participants
Nine CMV fleets participated in this study. To be eligible to participate, CMV fleets must have significantly reduced their crashes, violations, claims, and/or scores in the FMCSA's Compliance, Safety, and Accountability (CSA) system. Researchers identified 14 potentially eligible CMV fleets with the assistance of CMV insurance companies or via state trucking associations. Once an eligible fleet was identified, researchers examined that fleet's crash, violation, and/or CSA scores to confirm safety improvement within the previous 10 years. These data were obtained from the FMCSA CSA system; no additional objective safety data (i.e., crash reports or carrier data sets) were obtained by the researchers to verify the safety improvements. Table 1 provides demographic information for the nine fleets that were identified. There was a wide range in the sizes of the fleets that participated in the case studies, ranging from a fleet with fewer than 50 power units to a fleet with more than 1000 power units.

Fleet Case Studies
Researchers conducted in-depth interviews for each of the nine CMV fleets. At least two individuals were interviewed for each fleet, and at least one of the interviewees was an individual responsible for fleet safety (i.e., a safety director, VP of Safety, safety manager, human resource manager, etc.). The second interviewee may have been a driver, fleet executive, a second safety manager, trainer, or human resource manager. Researchers structured these interviews based on the Haddon Matrix [33,34] and focused on factors associated with the fleet's culture, drivers, managers, and vehicles. The interviews were semi-structured and focused on the following seven topics:

1.
Events that precipitated the efforts to improve safety; 2.
Details related to which safety initiatives were implemented, with a focus on strategies related to hiring, training, technologies, culture, maintenance, and scheduling; 3.
The timeline for implementing the safety initiatives; 4.
Details about why the specific safety initiatives were selected and how they were developed; 5.
Information about how the safety initiatives were implemented; 6.
Pre-and post-crash rates and the violations and CSA scores pre-and post-safety initiative implementation; 7.
The measures used to assess the success of the safety initiatives; 8.
The fleet's perceived effectiveness of the safety initiatives.

Content Analysis
The content analysis methodology was based on the framework analysis [35]. Each of the interviews was recorded and coded to identify all relevant information, including all themes and subthemes. Finally, common themes, subthemes, and specific strategies were indexed and placed in the Haddon Matrix. Table 2 shows the substantial safety improvement in each of the participating carriers along with the strategies the fleet believed had the largest impact on their improved safety performance. Non-substantial improvements are not included (a one percentile improvement, no change, insufficient data to analyze, etc.).

Fleet A Results
Fleet A had a history of focusing on safety, and as a part of this focus, regularly conducted internal safety assessments and industry benchmarking studies. As a result of these analyses, Fleet A decided additional strategies were needed to reduce crashes. Specifically, Fleet A identified a need to improve training for new and existing drivers. Previously, driver training was implemented consistently across each of the fleet's locations. This created inconsistent expectations and differing knowledge and skills of drivers across the fleet. Additionally, an internal safety assessment identified an opportunity to reduce rear-end crashes and at-fault, preventable crashes. These results lead the fleet to investigate the use of safety technologies as a crash reduction countermeasure. Fleet A used the strategies shown in Table 3 to improve its safety performance.

Fleet B Results
In 2012, Fleet B's Vice President of Safety retired. That individual's replacement was not successful at maintaining the fleet's strong safety culture. As a result, the fleet's crash statistics and CSA scores worsened, with some CSA scores climbing above the 90th percentile. To address the safety issue, a new Vice President of Safety was hired, and the strategies in Table 4 were implemented to improve the fleet's safety performance.
Specifically, Fleet B decided to equip all new trucks with the newest factory-installed safety technologies. This was decided in an effort to reduce the number of preventable crashes.

Fleet C Results
Fleet C routinely performed internal safety audits and benchmarked its safety statistics against other peer fleets. In 2011, these internal safety audits showed unacceptable increases in crashes, specifically preventable crashes, and CSA scores. As a result, the fleet hired a new Director of Safety. This individual assessed the current safety policies and programs and revised or replaced many aspects of the fleet's operating procedure. The new Director of Safety implemented the strategies in Table 5 to successfully improve safety.

Fleet D Results
In 2012, Fleet D received a warning from their insurance provider of an unacceptably high number of HOS violations. These resulted in CSA HOS scores above the 90th percentile. In response, Fleet D replaced its Director of Safety and immediately implemented ELDs in all trucks. Additionally, the new Director of Safety used numerous other safety programs and policies (Table 6) to improve safety performance, including eliminating preventable rear-end and rollover crashes identified in each of the previous 3 years.

Fleet E Results
Similarly to some of the other fleets that participated in this case study, Fleet E was historically a safety conscious fleet that regularly assessed the effectiveness of its current safety programs. These regular assessments led to periodic adjustments to its safety policies and practices. These helped the fleet experience a significant gradual improvement in serious crashes, with an additional 10% crash reduction in the previous 8 months that coincided with the implementation of the latest generation of collision mitigation technologies and with enhanced screening of new hires. Fleet E's safety improvement strategies are shown in Table 7. Table 7. Fleet E's safety improvement strategies.

Type of Strategy Strategy Details
Driver hiring 1. Began using a personality assessment in the driver selection process to identify individuals that may be a good fit as a driver.

Fleet F Results
Fleet F historically had low crash rates and good CSA scores. However, in 2017, the fleet identified several opportunities to become even safer, including the implementation of safety technologies designed to reduce preventable crashes. As a result of the strategies in Table 8, Fleet F reduced its FMCSA-reportable crash rate from an average of 0.86 crashes per million miles to 0.29 crashes per million miles.

Fleet G Results
In 2012, Fleet G's ownership changed. Although the change in ownership was not specifically related to safety, Fleet G's safety performance was a factor in the decision. Under the new leadership, Fleet G decided to examine and revamp several safety-related policies and procedures, including the purchase of all new vehicles and investing in VDMS in 2017. This was implemented as a way to address high vehicle out-of-service rates and instances of risky driving. As a result, between 2017 and 2018, Fleet G doubled the number of power units and was able to reduce its FMCSA-reportable crash rate from 1.04 crashes per million miles to 0.35 crashes per million miles. Overall, Fleet G implemented the safety improvement strategies shown in Table 9. Table 9. Fleet G's safety improvement strategies.

Type of Strategy Strategy Details
Driver hiring 1. Participated in FMCSA's PSP. 2. Used hiring criteria that included at least 2 years of driving experience, no more than 5.5 points on the driver's motor vehicle record, and no reckless driving violations. 3. Preferred hiring drivers with experience transporting live agricultural animals. 4. Safety Director personally checked references from previous employers. 5. Required applicants to perform an agility test to identify mobility challenges. Identified accommodations and job placement based on results from the agility test.
Driver training 1. Provided 3-day new driver safety training to review fleet-specific safety policies and regulations and an overview of federal and state regulations related to transporting live animals. 2. Paired new drivers without live-haul experience with an experienced driver for approximately 1 month to gain confidence with the unique challenges associated with live hauls. 3. Held semi-annual, in-person refresher training to review seasonal issues. 4. Provided monthly web-based education on safe driving strategies. 5. Provided individual coaching based on VDMS data.

Fleet H Results
Over time, Fleet H experienced an upward trend of crash involvement, until its CSA Crash Indicator score was above the 90th percentile. As a result, a new Safety Director was hired to identify areas for improvement and to reduce the fleet's crash rate. Fleet H used the strategies shown in Table 10 to gradually reduce its reportable crash rates from 0.78 crashes per million miles to 0.59 crashes per million miles and reduce its CSA Crash Indicator score below the high-risk threshold. Table 10. Fleet H's safety improvement strategies.

Type of Strategy
Strategy Details

Fleet I Results
Fleet I was the smallest fleet to participate in the study. Due to its size, historically the fleet did not have many reportable crashes; however, it had experienced a gradual increase in less severe incidents. Additionally, the fleet experienced a rise in HOS violations. To help address these two safety issues, Fleet I hired a new Safety Manager, who implemented the strategies shown in Table 11. These strategies helped Fleet I reduce the number of less severe incidents from 28 to 13 in 2017-2018, improved its CSA HOS score, and eliminated FMCSA-reportable crashes in 2018.

Haddon Matrix of All Suggested Strategies
A total of 64 distinct safety countermeasures were mentioned across the nine case studies. These safety countermeasures were those mentioned by the fleets as critical to improving or maintaining their safety performance. These are likely not all the safety program or initiatives the fleets implemented; however, these are the ones the fleets noted as being important to reducing their crashes, violations, or claims.
Each of these safety countermeasures was grouped into a 3 × 4 Haddon Matrix (see Table S1). The Haddon Matrix includes identifying pre-crash, at the scene, and post-crash crash safety initiatives, and identifying if they focus on the vehicle, people, environment, or culture. Many of the identified countermeasures could fall into multiple areas (i.e., nearly all countermeasures rely on a strong safety culture); however, these were categorized based on the primary target (i.e., the vehicle, individual, environment, or management). As shown in Table S1, 55 of the 64 (85.9%) safety countermeasures fell into the pre-crash category.

Discussion
This study attempted to identify the strategies that fleets used to successfully improve their safety performance and, in some cases, helped the fleet avoid losing their insurance or federal authority to operate. Examining the results of the case studies highlights several important conclusions. First, there was no single strategy to successfully reduce crashes and improve safety. Instead, each fleet examined their operation and policies to develop a comprehensive, tailored approach to improve safety. Although the specific strategies varied across fleets, all of the fleets focused on safety-focused hiring criteria, driver training for new and existing drivers, and implementing policies and programs to improve safety culture. This comprehensive approach to improve safety supports previous research [2,3,14,15].
Second, results from this study showed a few key strategies that carriers should focus on when attempting to improve their safety performance. For instance, six of the nine carriers indicated that an improved safety culture was critical to their success. This finding aligns with the results reported in Bergoffen et al. [15] and Corsi and Barnard [3], who previously found that management culture was significantly related to safety. Additionally, the strategies used by the fleets to improve safety performance closely matched the management best practices described in Short et al. [17]. These practices involve generating support and commitment from top management, generating buy-in from drivers, creating a family environment, holding all employees and departments accountable for their role in driver safety, and using reward and recognition programs.
Finally, it was apparent that vehicle safety technology played an important role in improving the participating fleets' safety performance. Eight of the nine carriers implemented some type of safety technology, and six of the nine carriers indicated that the safety technology was critical to the successful improvement in safety performance. These results support findings from previous research that safety technologies were effective at preventing crashes [25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. In fact, some of the fleets that participated in this study found significant reductions in crashes following the deployment of a safety technology. For example: • Fleet A experienced a 56% reduction in preventable rear-end crashes after implementing AEB. • Fleet B reported a 32% reduction in FMCSA-reportable crash rate after implementing a suite of advanced safety technologies. • Fleet C used AEB along with a telematics device and experienced a 75% reduction in preventable crashes. • Fleet D eliminated rear-end crashes and rollovers with AEB and roll stability control on trailers. • Fleet E reported a 36% reduction in FMCSA-reportable crash rates after implementing a suite of safety technologies. • Fleet F noticed a 66% reduction in their FMCSA-reportable crash rate after implementing VDMS and AEB.
These results suggest that safety technologies have a positive return on investment, which supports the findings from Belzowski et al. [25] and Medina-Flintsch et al. [32]. Each of the fleets that used an advanced safety technology to improve safety believed they experienced a positive return on investment and continued purchasing trucks with the advanced safety technologies.
However, fleets did experience some challenges and barriers when implementing some of these safety-improvement strategies. Some fleets indicated challenges associated with using strict hiring criteria. Fleet B and Fleet F mentioned difficulties finding qualified drivers after implementing strict hiring criteria based on potential employees' past safetyperformance. Fleet B overcame this challenge by working closely with recruiters to increase advertising and targeted recruitment efforts. Additionally, Fleet B found that some of their existing drivers did not meet these stricter hiring criteria, which required these existing drivers to complete additional training or face termination. However, all open driver positions were filled within 8 months of revising the hiring criteria. Fleet F used a different strategy to address the challenges associated with strict hiring criteria. They focused their efforts on driver retention. They adjusted driver pay from mileage to hourly, offered retention bonuses, annual pay raises, and driver referral bonuses.
The other common barrier discussed by many fleets was driver resistance to the safety technologies. Drivers at many of the carriers that implemented AEB were initially resistant to the technology as they did not like the idea of losing control of the vehicle. However, all the fleets indicated that resistance diminished as soon as drivers experienced the technology working to prevent a crash and understood its benefits. This also supports the results in Hickman et al. [36], where drivers suggested that experiencing safety technologies helped to generate buy-in. Fleet B also experienced challenges associated with the older generation of LDW. Initially, the technology was an annoyance to drivers due to excessive false alerts, and the fleet decided to disable it. However, Fleet B pilot tested a newer generation of LDW and found that it was significantly better at limiting false alerts. They decided to equip all new trucks with the latest generation of LDW. Finally, fleets that implemented a VDMS experienced initial resistance from drivers. Fleets were able to overcome this resistance by being open and honest about the reasons for implementing the system, showing drivers the pilot test data (which revealed the reductions in risky driving), actively listening to driver concerns about privacy, and using early and frequent communications to address driver feedback.

Limitations
Although this study captured important information related to strategies fleets used to improve safety performance, there are a few limitations. First, this study was not able to quantify the safety improvements caused by specific strategies. Rather, this qualitative study could only compare and contrast the strategies implemented by a diverse group of CMV fleets. Second, because most of the CMV fleets were medium to large CMV fleets, the results may not generalize to small fleets (i.e., 1-5 power units). Small fleets may have different experiences; thus, the strategies highlighted in this study may not be appropriate or reflective of their experiences. Finally, all nine fleets that participated in this study were for hire; no private fleets participated. It is possible that private fleets may have additional strategies that may be effective at improving safety.

Conclusions
Poor safety performance can have significant consequences for fleets. Not only do CMV crashes often result in injury or significant property damage, poor safety records often lead to increased insurance rates, the loss of insurance, and significant liability. Thus, finding strategies to successfully improve safety is important; however, many fleets may not know what their peers have done to successfully improve safety. This study was designed to identify strategies that fleets have used to reduce crash rates and improve CSA scores. Results from this study support previous research showing the importance of a comprehensive approach to safety with a focus on improving safety culture and using safety technologies. Strategies included ensuring leadership's commitment to safety performance, strictly adhering their hiring criteria, implementing driver training and education, emphasizing driver-focused programs, and equipping the vehicles with safety technologies designed to reduce crashes.