Where are people during the daytime? The short answer is: children are at school and adults are at work. There are so many driving safety programs out there that reach out to schools to teach teen drivers how to become better drivers. Every year in October, the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS) does something similar for the workplace.

This year’s campaign is called Focus 360°: Getting there is everyone's business. For the second year in a row, this year’s campaign is also focusing its energy on trying to keep distracted driving in check. Last year’s efforts have produced favorable results: nearly 88% of the 5000 organizations that participated now have some form of corporate mobile phone policy.

While the teen driver safety program covers half the population of drivers, NETS plans to cover the other half to keep everyone safe.

On the NETS site, they have a free downloadable Drive Safely Work Week toolkit (http://trafficsafety.org/drivesafelyworkweek/how-to-use.php) which is filled with tips/ideas, activities, graphics and all the resources needed to help employers provide education for their employees.

Several auto companies acknowledge the dangers of distracted driving and have internal policies for their employees not to be victimized by it. It is up to the employers or the organization if they are going to implement one.

The toolkit helps in 3 ways:

• it could help enforce existing workplace policies concerning driving and mobile phone use
• it could help employers establish a set of policies if they don’t have it yet
• it could help provide material on distracted driving for employees, if they don’t plan on establishing policies

The reason the campaign is called Focus 360° is because this year’s materials cover not only addressing distracted driving dangers as a driver, but also as a passenger, pedestrian or cyclist.

Drive Safely Work Week starts on October 3, and wouldn’t it be better if your employer grabbed the toolkit and planned the activities for the company this early? Better yet, why wait for October to keep everyone safe?

Labels: dangers of distracted driving, distracted driving, drive safely, driver safety, teen driver safety, teen drivers