Opinion: Safety Is About Big Understanding, Not Big Data
This Opinion piece appears in the June 13 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
By Don Osterberg
Retired
Transportation Safety Professional
Many years ago, when I was new to transportation safety, our team crafted five tenets for safety success:
1. Create and lead a true culture of safety.
2. Hire the right drivers and retain them.
3. Train them effectively.
4. Manage safety performance actively.
5. Leverage technology to enhance safety performance.
OsterbergMy focus today will be on the last two.
Job No. 1 is to create and lead a true culture of safety by unequivocally establishing safety as a core value that will not be compromised for other competing demands, such as productivity or service. Once a true safety culture has been achieved, you’ll be in a position to fully embrace and benefit from safety-proven technologies. Conversely, simply layering technology programs on top of a dysfunctional safety culture will create disappointing results.
Overcoming the Threat of Analysis Paralysis
There’s a lot of talk these days about “big data.” The explosion of available data has challenged leaders to distill from it relevant and actionable insights and leverage these insights to enhance fleet safety.
While a student at the U.S. Army War College, I wrote a paper on information-age decision making, contrasting it with the decision-making model of the industrial age, which I opined was based upon the belief that certainty in decision making would be enhanced by increasing data inputs that, once analyzed, would enable deeper understanding — and thus, timely and more informed decisions. In today’s information age, however, the pace at which data have become available exceeds the cognitive limitations of leaders to process, which often results in “analysis paralysis” due to different and contradictory interpretations of the same data sets.
In short, data-generating sensor technologies matured faster than technology-enabled analytical tools. In commercial trucking, it has become increasingly clear that simply increasing data inputs is of dubious value, absent our ability to translate this “big data” into “big understanding” that is preconditional to timely and informed decision making.
The good news is that advanced analytical techniques now available allow us to find correlations and patterns between sensor-generated and historical data.
Beyond Reactive to Predictive
Reflecting on my military experience, we described the environment within which we operated as Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous, or VUCA. I would argue the environment within which commercial transportation operates today is VUCA. To deal with this process, rules-of-thumb emerged as a way to simplify decision making. One such rule that took on a life of its own holds that safety management is by its very nature reactive. Many transportation safety professionals are guided by the belief that success flows to those who recognize what caused a crash and quickly react to avoid a recurrence.
While a quickly reactive approach to safety management still is needed and will remain part of an overarching approach to safety, both sensor and advanced analytical technologies have matured to the point where we now can detect seemingly disparate correlations among variables that predict future crashes and injuries. Near-miss incidents and problematic driver behaviors that can lead to crashes now can be detected and addressed before crashes occur, enabling proactive interventions.
The Path Forward
With this in mind, here are a few rules-of-thumb to consider that hold the potential to measurably improve safety performance in the trucking industry:
1. Embrace the need to transform safety management from largely reactive to mostly proactive.
2. Don’t chase technology. I know this from experience because I fell into the “chasing technology trap” many years ago. While testing emerging safety technologies, I found imperfections in the current generation of technology and procrastinated recommending an execution decision by thinking that the next generation of the technology would be better.
Of course, the next generation will be better; however, if you embrace that “wait and see” mindset, you’ll forever chase the technology and never make an execution decision. While imperfect, many safety technologies today are very good. Don’t wait.
3. Don’t wait for a government mandate. Some argue that if the safety technologies are so good with clear and measurable benefits, the Department of Transportation would mandate their use. Don’t be deluded. The pace of technology maturation inevitably will exceed the lethargic pace at which regulations are promulgated.
For those who bemoan that our industry is overregulated, keep in mind that if our industry demonstrates the ability to self-regulate — a sign of health and vibrancy — regulations will not be needed. Bottom line: Don’t wait for DOT to direct the use of safety technologies because it will always be late to the game. Innovators lead regulators every time.
So, whether you’re motivated by the moral obligation to operate safely or the financial risk of failure, both lead us to the same place. Create a strong safety culture, and embrace safety technologies that demonstrate the capability to reduce risk. Stop wringing your hands, and make an execution decision. The upside is significant, and the downside limited.
Osterberg, a retired Army infantry officer, forged a second career as a transportation safety professional for Schneider. He served on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Council, the Transportation Research Board’s executive committee and the National Safety Council’s board of governors, to name a few. He currently serves as a member of the board of advisers for SmartDrive Systems. He recently retired for the second time and lives with his wife, Terri, in Eagle River, Wisconsin.
