National Safety Council Offers Tips to Keep June "Crash-Free"

Over 50 million drivers have taken the National Safety Council’s Defensive Driving Course, and now with its online version (DDC-PC), it’s one of the most easily accessible training program, in the U.S. as well.

In keeping with this year’s National Safety Month and the NSC’s call for a “crash-free June,” corporate sponsors around the country are offering the course free in selected communities, and the NSC is urging employers to provide it for their staff, especially if they drive on the job.

The observance of Crash-Free June by the NSC follows the World Health Organization’s observance of World Health Day on April 7, centered on the growing issue of road traffic injuries in the developing world, where deaths have reached 1.2 million a year worldwide. As American EMS professionals are well aware, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of injury death and the eighth leading cause of death overall in the U.S., resulting in over 41,000 yearly fatalities here—many of them preventable.

Driver behavior contributes to 90% of all motor vehicle crashes, according to the NSC’s John Ulczycki, “primarily in these seven ways: speeding, alcohol, aggressive driv­ing, distracted driving, drowsy driving, failure to yield and young driver issues.” Driving defensively means not only taking responsibility for yourself and your actions, says the NSC fact sheet on the subject, but also keeping an eye on “the other guy.”

Pull over, ambulance operators, the NSC wants to remind you that driving defensively continues even with lights and siren. The council’s CEVO-II set of courses (Coaching the Emergency Vehicle Operator, revised edition), geared for ambulance, fire or police vehicles, steers the experienced as well as the novice driver toward better driving habits.

Brian Melville, training coordinator for Superior Air-Ground Ambulance Service, Inc. in Elmhurst, IL, recently took the newest instructor’s version and says the updated courses are highly interactive and even “more dynamic [than the earlier version], getting everybody telling stories and learning—or refreshing themselves on—how to better handle it out there. We require all of our new hires to take the course before we let them drive, and anybody who has a road incident—no matter whose fault it is—has to take it again.”

FLI Learning Systems Executive Vice President Bill Waslick, a CEVO-II developer and instructor, says the course offers CEU credits for individual participants and an overall ranking for the sponsoring agency to compare how its drivers stand with others who have taken the course nationwide. Many insurance plans also provide a discount for emergency response companies whose drivers take a defensive driving course. For more information, visit www.secure.nsc.org/train/course.cfm?id=66.

The NSC’s Program Development and Training Manager, James Solomon, offers these additional tips to EMS providers driv­ing in an emergency:

“Make sure it’s really necessary to use lights and siren before you switch them on. And when you come to an intersection, make sure you can stop if the other vehicles there fail to yield.” Defensive driving means you have to be alert: Make sure other drivers see you, hear you, know which direction you’re coming from and know what to do, before you take the right of way. “People don’t seem to know how to behave around an emergency vehicle, so you have to watch out for them,” says Solomon.

Solomon adds that EMS providers can promote road safety by educating the public about emergency vehicles. “Volunteer your time to high school driver-ed programs and health classes, community groups and fundraising events—the equipment will draw people to you. Or invite a local TV ‘action news team’ for a ride in your ambulance and show the motoring public just how stupid they really can be. They don’t know what to do; you need to show them.”

“Defensive driving means becoming more aware of all our behavior on the road,” says Ulczycki. “It’s really no different for emergency vehicle operators than for anybody else.” For more information, visit www.nsc.org.

—KR