Driving Monitors—The Ultimate Behavior Based Safety Tool?

Abstract

Abstract Driving and motor vehicle safety has proven to be a consistent area of importance for all companies in the Exploration and Production (E&P) industry, particularly because it is often an unsupervised task and drivers are left to their own devices. In an effort to reduce driving incidents, driving monitors have been used by several companies to monitor driver behavior and performance. They have proven so successful in reducing the number of undesirable driving behaviors and vehicular incidents that the International Association for Oil and Gas Producers (OGP) has recommended their use as a ‘best practice’ for achieving safer driving behavior in the workplace. A large number of companies have started introducing Behavior Based Safety (BBS) programs into their workplaces in an effort to identify ‘at risk’ behaviors through ‘observations’ and to intervene before an incident occurs. What is not widely recognized is that driving monitors operate with a similar intent, but have the capability to provide immediate information regarding specified key behaviors at all times while driving, rather than ‘one-off’ brief observations provided for in a BBS program. This paper will review a driving monitor case study to describe how significant individual and site level behavioral changes have occurred and been sustained after driving monitors are installed and managed correctly. This paper will compare the operating model for driving monitors to contemporary BBS observation models. The similarities and differences in application of both systems will be identified to determine respective strengths and weaknesses. Lessons learned from the implementation of a driving monitor program will also be discussed as a possible model for the successful integration of driving monitors into a BBS program in an organization. Driving monitors and BBS programs have both proven to be very effective systems for achieving rapid behavioral change in our most challenging operating environments. This paper will highlight the significant lessons to be learned from the application of driving monitors and propose methods for how they can be used as another form of observation data in a wider BBS program. The linking of driving monitor data into an organizational BBS program can readily complement the program and assist in achieving a new level of true behavior based safety in the industry's most dangerous activity - driving.