Part one of a three-part series on negligent entrustment

By Kevin Reilly, Editorial Communications Manager, The CEI Group, Inc.

Negligent entrustment – two words that keep the experienced fleet manager up at night.

And yet, there are still fleets, large and small, that are not in a position to defend themselves from this form of liability.

Negligent entrustment occurs when an employer allows an employee to drive on company business when the employer should have known that that employee was unfit for the road. The key word in this definition is “should.” The onus is on the employer to execute their due diligence before allowing an employee behind the wheel for business, and a company cannot claim they “didn’t know” about the reckless history or habits a driver possessed when they gave that driver the keys.

No two fleets are the same, and the liability issues they face are just as unique as the rest of their operations. Some fleets don’t have a safety policy at all, or a weak one at best, and these fleets are one negligent claim away from a lawsuit.

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By Mark Boada, Senior Editor

Billions of dollars have been spent and billions more have been committed to pursuing the ultimate goal of automotive safety: zero accidents.

Whether that goal – literally, not a single crash ever again – is practical, no one denies that future technology will produce a dramatic reduction in collisions, save lives and lessen injuries.

The proof of concept is the success that some of the driver-assist systems that have already been deployed. To date, the most effective system is forward crash avoidance with automatic emergency braking. According to the IIHS, it has proven to reduce rear-end collisions by 40 percent. That’s a remarkable result, especially given that rear-end collisions are the most frequent kind, accounting for some 34 percent of all roadway accidents.

What’s wrong with this picture? Not much, but one nagging question remains: what about the other 60 percent, the rear-enders the technology doesn’t prevent?

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More companies are doing the right thing and banning all cellphone use, other than preset GPS route guidance, behind the wheel for employees driving a company car or doing company business.

That means no texting of any kind at any time (including at stoplights) and no calls of any kind including hands-free (that’s right, countless studies over many years prove there is virtually NO difference in distraction between hands-free and hand-held calls). Violate the ban, and you could get fired.

Don’t think it’s a crisis? Rethink it. Translating the most recent available data on annual road fatalities into the equivalent number of airplane crashes, there would be 15 plane crashes of average size commercial planes a month in the US. Try wrapping your brain around that—imagine if 15 airplanes were crashing each month. Surely every corporation and household would notice. We would not accept this.

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New York Times

If the sticker shock faced by car shoppers in the showroom isn’t enough to provoke a cardiac episode, a visit to the dealership’s service department might do the job.

That’s where a tire-kicking customer is likely to spot the sign announcing labor charges upward of $125 an hour, a rate typical in cities and at the low end for luxury brands.

Besides chest pains, the number might also elicit a gasp of realization: “That’s way more than I earn.”

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The Detroit Bureau

When Waymo, the autonomous vehicle spin-off of Google began offering to let Phoenix-area families try out its vehicle service last month it touched off what a new study is calling “a historic revolution in transportation.”

While the number of Americans using all forms of ride-sharing – autonomous or otherwise – is currently quite small, RethinkX, an independent think tank that looks at the impact of new technology says it will grow rapidly.

By 2030, it predicts in its new report, 95% of the miles traveled in the U.S. will be in self-driving, shared electric vehicles.

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Jalopnik

Here’s Elaine Chao, the new U.S. Transportation Secretary who is concerned about the comfort level citizens have toward autonomous cars, talking about self-driving cars this week: “We have now self-driving cars. We have level-two self-driving cars. They can drive on the highway, follow the white lines on the highway, and there’s really no need for any person to be seated and controlling any of the instruments.”

Come again?

When Chao expressed that she understands citizens need to better understand self-driving tech, it was a show for optimism; only one-in-four Americans trust the idea of a robot car right now. But this remark? This doesn’t jibe with reality.

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NGT News

Among the many alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) fleets touted at this year’s Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo, held in Long Beach, Calif., there was one company that stood out for the success of its massive AFV and advanced vehicle technology fleet.

UPS, the delivery company with a strong sustainability corporate policy, has been making strides in the AFV market for years, having deployed more than 8,300 AFVs across the globe – and it looks like it’s far from finished.

On Tuesday, May 2, UPS announced the addition of its first fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) to its “Rolling Laboratory” fleet and displayed its chassis and powertrain for attendees at the ACT Expo.

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Wired

The car has long proved a cornerstone of American life, inextricably tied to almost everything people do in work, life, leisure, and business.

It is also a marker of our contemporary moment, distilling and reacting to cultural cues—think of the bombastic muscle cars of the Vietnam era, and the trepidatious econo-boxes that arrived in its wake. That won’t change anytime soon, but the car will undergo radical change—from the inside out.

“I look at the exterior as the love at first site, and the interior as the long-term relationship,” says says Derek Jenkins, chief of design for California electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors.

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By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer

As any great salesperson will tell you, sales is not about a great product or service, it’s about the customer’s perception of value.

For fleet decision-makers, value is helping to maximize the contribution of the fleet to corporate strategic goals as well as the savings derived from controlling costs.

The more meaningful the value story, the better the chance that a fleet service or product provider can begin or move along the sales process with a fleet decision-maker.

Even if the company has been an industry leader for 100 years, insists that every manager earn a Six Sigma Master Black Belt, regularly wins prestigious “Best of” awards, and reports fantastical total customer savings every quarter … even with all of that, the ability to differentiate the value proposition — in terms that are meaningful to the customer – is the real key to winning and keeping business.

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The Washington Post

A report suggesting that drivers killed in crashes are more likely to be on drugs than drunk is getting pushback from a surprising direction — other traffic-safety advocates.

A week after a report suggesting that drug-impaired driving is moving to the fore of concerns in traffic safety, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) jumped in Monday to express concern that the report could lead the public to believe the country has turned the corner on drunk driving. There is still much work to do, MADD officials said.

“There is no way you can say drugs have overtaken alcohol as the biggest killer on the highway,” J.T. Griffin, chief government affairs officer at MADD, said Monday.

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