When the bear wakes up, there's going to be trouble

I had an interesting conversation the other day with a fleet safety manager that I know. His fleet had been having severe problems through the spring and summer with logbook violations, and were planning to implement a training program to help address the issue. It wasn't that their drivers were consciously trying to fudge their logs, but that they just didn't understand the regs and were making mistakes as a result. Current HOS regulations are pretty confusing, especially if you work cross-border, so you certainly can't blame someone for misunderstanding some of them. A customized training program looked like a great solution.

Except that they never got around to actually implementing it.

Over the last few months, their violation rate has gone down and the urgency of the problem seems to have gone down as well. When I spoke to the safety manager the other day, he said they weren't planning on doing the training program anymore, because "the problem went away".

Well, not quite.

While their violation rate may have gone down, and the drivers that were having problems have stopped having those problems (mostly because they've learned the hard way what not to do with their logs), the underlying problem itself hasn't changed.

That's because the real problem wasn't the violations - the real problem was the situation that created the violations in the first place. 

Drivers were getting violations because they didn't understand the regs. Drivers didn't understand the regs because the tools being used to convey information - driver meetings, pay stub inserts, etc. - were unreliable and ineffective. On top of that, the fleet also had no way to gauge whether or not that information was being received and processed properly, so all they could do was wait and see if problems came up afterwards. That problem hasn't been solved. And the next time there's a regulatory or process change, the same problems are more than likely to come up again.

If you're camping and a bear comes into your camp site, you've got a problem. If the bear goes to sleep, you get some temporary relief. But sooner or later that bear is going to wake up, and when it does you want to be far away!

Getting rid of the violations wasn't the answer. The fact that my safety manager friend isn't facing multiple logbook violations every week doesn't mean that the bear has left the campsite. It just means that it's sleeping right now.

Fixing the process that created the violations in the first place is the answer. Figuring out where the existing processes have failed, and rectifying those failures, is the answer. Implementing a solution that lets drivers take the time they need to learn the regulations properly (without having to make other sacrifices), and lets management see where the knowledge gaps are before those gaps turn into problems on the road, is the way to fix the problem once and for all. 

When that's done, the fleet will truly have solved the problem, and the bears will be gone from their campsite.