Too Much Safety?

We are not far off from the annual truck driver safety meetings in Canada. The meetings are generally held the same weekend as the American Thanksgiving. This is because in the United States, they close the doors of so many factories on Wednesday afternoon of Thanksgiving and they remain closed on Thursday (Thanksgiving Day) and Black Friday. This gives the employees of many warehouses, shippers, receivers and factories a four-day weekend.

Canadian truck drivers usually make their last delivery on Wednesday and then hurry home on Thursday or Friday. For Canadian trucking employers, this means that they can get a very high percentage of their drivers to a safety meeting at that time, without losing freight to a competitor. Many of the cross-border trucking companies do the same thing.  Guest speakers are in high demand for the American Thanksgiving weekend.

However, not all companies wait for this weekend. Some companies have safety meetings more frequently; some have two in-person safety meetings per year. Others have three in-person meetings and some even have four in-person meetings in a year.

That is why I am asking, can we have too much safety?

Many companies also use online training platforms such as Infinit-i for training. They then use a combination of in-person meetings and an online platform. Many of these companies are now training every month. Is this too much?

And why do companies train? After all, you are a truck driver, and you consider yourself a professional. You have had your licence for quite some time. You are experienced. The answer is because they are required to. That is the answer, and it is simple.  According to Occupational Health and Safety, employers must train their employees.

What if you are not employed but are part of Driver Inc.? It is my opinion that the company that you are working with, is still required to train you. And besides, it is not just Workplace Safety or Occupational Health and Safety that says that employees must be trained. There are also the Labour Boards. This could be Federal or Provincial. Then look at the insurer of the trucks. They are always asking about training for the new hires and the ongoing training of the existing drivers. It is the insurer who also really likes remedial training for the drivers that have a violation or infraction. It is not just the government that demands training, it is also the insurance companies.

Is all this training too much? Can too much knowledge be a bad thing? I for one say NO. There is never too much training.

I do think that there are boring trainers and terrible training. The boring and the terrible make it a punishment for the drivers to attend training sessions. This is one of the reasons truck drivers sometimes don’t like the annual training meetings. They don’t learn anything new.

I have sat through some terrible and boring training sessions. As a trainer, I try my best to be spirited and a little entertaining.  There are not many ways to tell the drivers to leave more space and to slow down. Leaving space and going a little slower are the key essentials to safe driving so they need to be discussed, but it can be done in an entertaining way.

So as the American Thanksgiving weekend gets closer, I wish all drivers a wonderful few days off.   And enjoy the training, because until we get to a point where there are never any more collisions, then we need to keep doing safety training!

Be Safe

Chris Harris
Top Dawg, Safety Dawg Inc.
905-973-7056
chris@safetydawg.com
@safety_dawg (twitter)