4 million drivers and 700,000 fleet operators were directly affected by the ban on cell phone use while driving, put into law by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) at the beginning of the year.
With the ban being in place since the first quarter of the year, ZoomSafer decided to take a survey to learn how businesses are coping with the changes.
Of the 570 executives queried in the survey, 74.3% reported they have some type of cell phone policy in place. There is a 30% margin of difference between FMCSA and non FMCSA fleets adopting the new changes.
There are many ways to enforce a company-wide cell phone policy. The five most widely used are:
- Random safety audit – 71.9%
- Post-crash discipline – 51.8%
- Peer reporting – 49.6%
- Behind-the-wheel training – 43.2%
- Online driver training – 34.5%
While 77% of the 570 respondents agree that the new cell phone regulations will have a positive effect on highway safety, almost 84% believe it will make it harder for them to recruit and retain drivers.
“While nine out of 10 (90.27%) FMCSA fleets require screening, less than half (44.4%) of non-FMCSA fleets do,” states BusinessFleet.com/.
It is very clear that the FMCSA use of BASICs (Unsafe Driving Behavioral Analysis Improvement Categories), a scoring system measuring a fleet’s safety readiness to screen their employees for “driving fitness”, has had a direct effect on this percentage.
How does this affect occupational drivers who need to access their cell phones for work related apps and mobile technology?
Developing these technologies to be integrated into the vehicle’s internal telematic system is one growing solution to maintaining productivity while on-the-road.
GPS Trackit has developed a number of technologies to meet the growing needs of fleet management, which are able to be customized to fit any business need.
