page_title: Work-related road safety in the United States
section_title: Intervention evaluations
hierarchical_section_title: Work-related road safety in the United States / Research and surveillance studies / Intervention evaluations
caption_attribution_description: English: Seat belt use by type of law, US, 2008
context_page_description: People who are driving as part of their work duties are an important road user category. First, workers themselves are at risk of road traffic injury. Contributing factors include fatigue and long work hours, delivery pressures, distractions from mobile phones and other devices, lack of training to operate the assigned vehicle, vehicle defects, use of prescription and non-prescription medications, medical conditions, and poor journey planning. Death, disability, or injury of a family wage earner due to road traffic injury, in addition to causing emotional pain and suffering, creates economic hardship for the injured worker and family members that may persist well beyond the event itself.
  Employers are in a unique position because they can use the employer-employee relationship as leverage to complement and enforce government policies that require safety belt use, prohibit impaired driving, and prohibit mobile-phone use and other forms of distracted driving. Safe-driving policies implemented in the workplace can promote safer driving away from work.
context_section_description: Researchers in the United States have undertaken field evaluations of in-vehicle devices that monitor driver behaviours and fuel consumption. Studies that tested the use of in-vehicle monitoring in emergency medical services (EMS) reported substantial improvements in driver behaviour through in-vehicle monitoring systems that gave drivers real-time feedback. The researchers reported that the technology demonstrated sustained cost savings in regards to vehicle maintenance and required minimal retraining of drivers. Another study of EMS drivers reported similar results and recommended gradual implementation of in-vehicle monitoring, with attention to defusing potential concerns regarding a punitive approach to corrective action.
  Another intervention study, conducted among U.S. and Canadian drivers, evaluated a device that prevents drivers from shifting vehicles into gear for up to 8 seconds unless safety belts are buckled. Participants were 101 commercial drivers who operated vans, pickups, and other light trucks. The driver could escape or avoid the delay by fastening his or her safety belt before shifting out of park. Unbelted participants experienced either a constant delay of 8 seconds, or a variable delay of 8 seconds on average. A 16-second delay was introduced for those U.S. drivers who did not show significant improvement. Safety belt use increased from 48% to 67% for U.S. drivers and from 54% to 74% for Canadian drivers. After the driver fastened his or her safety belt, it tended to remain fastened for the duration of the trip.
  Few U.S. studies have assessed the effectiveness of initiatives intended to change occupational drivers’ behaviours through management interventions. One exception is a series of related experimental studies conducted over many years by Ludwig and Geller among pizza delivery drivers. In the United States, these workers tend to be college-age and thus relatively inexperienced drivers. Drawing from principles of organizational and community psychology, Ludwig and Geller proposed that interventions should be applied in a multiple-level hierarchical fashion, beginning with low-cost, low-intensity interventions targeted at all drivers and proceeding to higher-intensity and more intrusive interventions for those who resisted initial interventions. They also hypothesized that an intervention's effectiveness depends on four variables:
  Involvement: The higher the level of employee involvement, the greater the likelihood that social norms within the work group will change.
  Peer support: Greater opportunities for interactions between workers will lead to individuals prompting one another to adopt the desired safety behaviour.
  Response information: The more salient and timely is the feedback the worker receives, the greater is the likelihood he or she will act on this feedback.
  External consequences: Stronger consequences, whether they come in the form of rewards for compliance or penalties for non-compliance, will be associated with stronger responses to the intervention.
  The studies conducted by Ludwig, Geller, and colleagues focused on inducing drivers to use safety belts and turn signals and to come to a complete stop at intersections. The interventions assessed in this research included awareness-raising, safety pledges, individual and group goal-setting (with goals assigned by managers or developed by workers), directives from management, and individual and group competitions for rewards.  In general, the researchers found that high-involvement interventions were effective in changing the targeted behaviour, and that in some cases these also seemed to be associated with positive changes in other safe driving behaviours.  In addition, individualized public feedback was more effective than generic feedback, and worked well for those who were initially non-compliant with low-level, non-intrusive interventions. When external consequences were discontinued, compliance was not sustained. The researchers recommended that organizations begin with low-intensity, low-cost interventions such as group meetin
caption: Seat belt use by type of law in 2008.
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