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New Distracted Driving Data Shows Emergency Responders At High Risk

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April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and the National Security Council (NSC) released new data this week that explores added transportation risks when emergency responders are en route to provide aid. It is clear that the mere presence of emergency personnel on the road can cause distractions for drivers and bystanders. To date, 16 emergency responders have been struck and killed by vehicles this year in the United States.

According to a survey released jointly by the NSC and the Emergency Responder Safety Institute (ERSI), 16 percent of respondents said they either have struck or nearly struck a first responder or emergency vehicle stopped on or near the road. Yet still, 89 percent of drivers say they believe distracted motorists are a major source of risk to first responders.

Key findings included:

  • 71% of drivers take photos and text while driving by emergency responders on the side of the road (this drops to 24% under normal driving conditions)
  • 60% take time to post to social media and 66% email about the situation
  • 80% admit to “rubbernecking” – that irritating, but also risky, practice of slowing down all traffic to get a better look
  • 49% say that possibly being struck by a vehicle is “just part of the risk” of being a first responder

As part of its #justdrive campaign, NSC has developed a free Safe Driving Kit to help employers keep their workers safe and is hosting a webinar on April 23, titled “You’re Not As Safe As You Think You Are,” to educate employers on the real risks of distracted driving and what safety-forward companies are doing to combat them.

“The cruel irony is, we are putting the people who are trying to improve safety in very unsafe situations,” said Nick Smith, interim president and CEO of the NSC. “Our emergency responders deserve the highest levels of protection as they grapple with situations that are not only tactically difficult but also emotionally taxing. Save your communications for off the road; disconnect and just drive.”

Already on the NTSB’s List

Earlier this year, Risk Management Monitor reported on the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements for 2019-2020, and “Eliminating Distractions” for all vehicle drivers is at its top.

In 2016, more than 3,100 fatal crashes on U.S. highways were attributed to driving-while-distracted. These crashes involved 3,210 distracted drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), because some of them involved more than one distracted driver. Furthermore, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute concluded that commercial drivers are at extremely high risk of a crash when texting—23 times greater than when otherwise engaged.

The NTSB states:

Contributing to the problem is the widespread belief by many drivers that they can multitask and still operate a vehicle safely. But multitasking is a myth; humans can only focus cognitive attention on one task at a time. That’s why executing any task other than driving is dangerous and risks a crash.

Personal electronic devices (PEDs), such as cell phones, are one of the greatest contributors to driver distraction and the NTSB recommends banding all PED use on U.S. roadways. The District of Columbia and 37 states restrict the use of cell phones by novice drivers, and 47 states, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands ban text messaging for all drivers.

 

New Fatigue Reports Awaken Employers to Injury Risks

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The National Safety Council (NSC) estimates that roughly 13 percent of workplace injuries are attributable to sleep problems, causing an economic impact of $400 billion. NSC information suggests that employers with 1,000 employees could incur losses of more than $1 million per year in missed workdays, lower productivity and increased healthcare due to employee fatigue.

But rather than merely provide a bunch of statistics and projections that could put you to sleep, the NSC is providing possible solutions to combat the risk in its new report Managing Fatigue: Developing an Effective Fatigue Risk Management System. 

According to the report, a workplace culture that rewards or tolerates fatigue can indirectly lead to on-the-job injuries. In some high-performance cultures, employees may view fatigue as a sign of weakness or laziness. They may be committed to getting the work done despite long hours, even believing that fatigue doesn’t affect them.

“In our 24/7 world, too many employees are running on empty,” said Emily Whitcomb, NSC senior program manager for fatigue initiatives.

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“Employees are an organization’s greatest asset, and addressing fatigue in workplaces will help eliminate preventable deaths and injuries.”

Strong fatigue risk management systems blend employee education and training with improvements to workplace environments, culture change, and data-driven programs. But implementing a fatigue risk management system is not an easy sell — to the C-suite and possibly also to employees. The report suggests:

It is important that the fatigue management process be transparent and that appropriate information is shared throughout the effort to obtain buy-in from all levels of the organization. Providing open forums that allow employees to share how fatigue affects them is one way to get engagement from the outset.

The NSC lists key components in creating a fatigue risk management system:

  1. Education and training. This raises awareness of risks, create motivation to prioritize rest, and provide information on how to manage fatigue and get proper rest.
  2. Policies and practices. Clarify roles and expectations and institute policies and practices for hours of work and rest based on science that recognizes the physiological need for sleep and circadian rhythms.
  3. Shared responsibility. Employers and employees should cooperate when it comes to understanding the sleep needs of the employee, while the organization should expect output from a well-rested worker.   
  4. Fatigue mitigation. A workplace with positive environmental controls promotes better overall working conditions and should be less physically stressful in ways that contribute to on-the-job fatigue.
  5. Data-driven programs and continuous improvement. With the system in place, seek employee feedback, facilitate monitoring mechanisms, check the data and apply lessons learned. Understand why the system was or was not successful and modify from there.  

Complementary to Managing Fatigue, the Campbell Institute – the center for environmental health and safety (EHS) excellence at the NSC – released results from a pilot study conducted among renowned safety organizations to assess worker fatigue and effective countermeasures. In Understanding Fatigue Risk: Assessment and Countermeasures, the Institute identifies a persistent gap between how employers and employees view fatigue and argue for changing a culture to enhance safety.

According to the study, about one-third of workers surveyed reported sleeping between one to five hours per weekday, and not the expert-recommended seven to nine hours.

“This indicates that a large proportion of workers at these sites are chronically sleep deprived, which when coupled with longer work days and work weeks than scheduled means that the risk of a fatigue-related injury is significantly increased,” the report said.

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Additional information about workplace fatigue is available at nsc.org/fatigue.

Fatigue in National News

The timing of these reports should be welcome news for employers. Earlier this month, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) unveiled its 2019-2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements. One of the 10 items included the need to “Reduce Fatigue-Related Accidents.”

The NTSB’s Open Safety Recommendations describes fatigue as “a pervasive problem in transportation that degrades a person’s ability to stay awake, alert, and attentive to the demands of safely controlling a vehicle, vessel, aircraft, or train.” There are currently 27 open recommendations for railroad, aviation, highway and marine operators in an effort to curb fatigue-related accidents.

“We do not simply come up with these recommendations based on a whim,” NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said during the list’s unveiling in Washington, D.C. “It’s a data-driven approach based on the results of our investigation and the tragic and senseless deaths we investigate.

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The Most Dangerous Month For Drivers Has Begun

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Now that August has arrived, warnings are being posted—the United States has entered its deadliest month for drivers, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). IIHS information revealed that 505 fatalities have been reported on Aug. 2 every year between 2012 and 2016—the most recent studied—making it the most fatal day for drivers in that time frame.

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During the same five-year span, July 4 had the second-highest number of traffic fatalities with 495.

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IIHS Senior Vice President for Communications Russ Rader attributed the statistic to the fact that there are more vehicles and road trips in unfamiliar territory, creating higher crash risks, on Aug.

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2 and during the summer in general.

“Traffic deaths are not inevitable. If everyone buckled up and every driver obeyed the laws against speeding and alcohol-impaired driving, the summer death toll would be much lower,” Rader said. “Even though Aug. 2 is a bad day, it’s staggering to recognize that, on average, about 100 people lose their lives on U.S. roads every single day of the year.”

A total of 37,461 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2016 and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s most recent estimate of the annual economic cost of crashes is $242 billion. Contributing to the death toll are alcohol, speeding, lack of safety belt use and other problematic driver behaviors.

“Each of those deaths could have been prevented,” Rader said. “We could make a lot more progress in reducing crashes and the deaths and injuries that result if we doubled down on the countermeasures that we know work.”

The National Safety Council (NSC) reported that of all the work-related deaths in 2016, nearly 1,600 took place on roadways and about 20% of those involved pedestrian automobiles.

Organizations with fleets should take note, as motor vehicle crashes are the number-one cause of work-related deaths, accounting for 24% of all fatal occupational injuries, according to the NSC. On-the-job crashes cause employers to sustain costs of more than $24,500 per property damage crash and $150,000 per injury crash.

Nationwide’s SmartRide program identified hard braking, fast acceleration and idling in traffic as the top causes of auto accidents. Those incidents, coupled with the fact that August marks the midpoint of summer in America, make this such a dangerous time to be on the road.

Nationwide’s data identifies Fridays in general, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., as the most aggressive time of the week for drivers. During this timeframe, drivers’ habits behind the wheel show more instances of hard braking and faster accelerations than any other time of the week. Additionally, Nationwide members reported more accidents in August 2016 (60,976) than any other month over the past four years.

“These critical pieces of data about driving habits have been identified as some of the leading contributors to auto accidents,” said Teresa Scharn, an associate vice president at Nationwide who helped build and manage the insurer’s telematics program. “When drivers are armed with this information, they can make necessary adjustments to their driving behaviors that will help them be safer drivers.”

Safety Groups Warn of Added Summer Risks

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Summer has arrived, but it is not a time for total relaxation. According to the National Safety Council (NSC), July and August typically see more accidental deaths than any other two-month period—a trend that includes drowning, pediatric vehicular heatstroke, pedestrian deaths, natural disasters and gun-related fatalities.

To stress the need for extra caution, the NSC has updated its Injury Facts interactive online database. This year marks the first time the NSC has categorized “hot car deaths” – which it recognizes as an emerging risk.

“Unfortunately, when we look at accidental deaths, summer is not the carefree period we’d like it to be,” NSC Manager of Statistics Ken Kolosh said. “The numbers underscore the need for public awareness. We hope Injury Facts can help people understand the biggest risks to their safety and take the steps needed to ensure no one gets hurt.”

With Independence Day arriving next Wednesday, more workers are expected to travel and take time off from their jobs. With an increase of people on the road and in pools and oceans, for example, more people are at risk of injury or death.
The NSC information released earlier this week dovetails with the end of National Safety Month. Facts and trends include:

  • Pedestrian fatalities. Pedestrian deaths start to increase in late summer and continue a steady increase through the end of the year. Since 2009, pedestrian deaths have risen sharply, totaling 7,330 in 2016 compared to 4,109 in 2009. For the first time, Injury Facts shows where pedestrian fatalities tend to occur, outdoor lighting conditions at the time of the death and the day of the week the incident occurred.
  • Drownings. Swimming, playing in the water or falling in the water claimed 656 lives in July alone in 2016, a 108% increase over the yearly average and their highest level that year. In total, 3,786 people died in 2016 from drowning. Injury Facts now breaks down all preventable deaths by month so people understand the biggest risks facing them throughout the calendar year.

When chronicling drunk driving incidents, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is pointing out the deadliness of the four-day period between July 2 and July 6. Over the 2016 Fourth of July holiday:

  • 188 people were killed in crashes involving at least one driver or motorcycle operator with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher.  (A 28% increase from 2015, which had 146 fatalities).
  • Nearly half of those who died were in a vehicle crash involving at least one driver or motorcycle operator with a BAC of .15 or higher—almost twice the legal limit.

Even if you’re off the road and hosting a company party or celebrating in a backyard, there are risks all around. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) warns that there are more fires reported on the Fourth of July than any other day of the year, nearly half of which are caused by fireworks. With extreme drought plaguing the western states, fireworks, outdoor grilling areas, and campfires require extra caution. The NFPA said that July is the peak month for grilling fires, with gas leaks cited as the leading cause.

And while looking to the sky for a fireworks show is always fun, the aforementioned groups recommend attending displays put on by professionals only and avoiding consumer fireworks. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) 2017 Fireworks Annual Report, fireworks were involved in an estimated 11,100 injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments in 2016.

“Preventable injuries are the third leading cause of death for the first time in United States history,” NSC President and CEO Debbie Hersman recently told Risk Management Monitor. “Sadly, our national opioid epidemic and the sudden recent increase in motor vehicle deaths have propelled preventable injuries past chronic lower respiratory disease and stroke in terms of how many lives are lost each year. Every single unintentional injury could have been prevented.”