By Laura Jozwiak, Senior Vice President of Sales and Client Relations, Wheels, Inc.

Do you need to walk in your customer’s shoes in order to truly understand their issues and provide the right solutions?

We have heard this saying many times before, and it could have been appropriate at the time, but time and challenges have changed. Customers still expect you to watch for cracks in the sidewalk and not let them fall. However, that is no longer enough for today’s fast paced environment.

Shoes are certainly foundational to the service equation. You can’t look forward if you aren’t on stable ground. However, I would suggest that we also tilt our heads up from our laptops and smart phones and provide an extra set of eyes for our customers. The greatest value comes from looking forward and into their future toward the next set of challenges and opportunities.

Do you take the time to look up? And when you do look up, do you stay there and consider options, strategies, and plans to move forward? Or do you quickly get distracted by the next email and bring your attention back to the cracks in the sidewalk again?

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By Art Liggio, President, Driving Dynamics

Picture this scenario: You, an experienced driver, are traveling through the city at the posted speed-limit. You find yourself negotiating busy intersections, changing traffic patterns―then all of a sudden your cell phone rings.

What is your next move? What would you do if your teen was in the car beside you?

Now consider this same scenario, however, this time, imagine it’s your newly-licensed 16-year-old child behind the wheel, driving through the city at the posted speed-limit, while negotiating busy intersections and changing traffic patterns. If during this trip his or her cell phone begins to ring, what do you expect your teenager will do? What would you want the response to be?

Likely you hope your teen would choose not to answer the call or to respond to the text message while driving. But how can you know the correct decision will be made?

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By Janice Sutton

Doug Keeley is president of Mark of a Leader, a consulting firm based in Toronto. He was a highly engaging keynote speaker at the recent NAFA Institute and Expo in Tampa, Florida. Fleet Management Weekly interviewed him after his keynote address.

What makes a great leader?

To be a great leader you must be 100 percent accountable for your actions. You must have clarity of vision. You must have integrity. Moreover, you must be a good communicator and a good storyteller. It’s not just about the person at the top – leaders at every level of the organization must also possess these qualities.

The most powerful definition of a leader is someone who helps others to be their best. A leader’s job is not to get the most out of people, it is to get the best out of people. Great leaders do that; they get people to do things that they didn’t know they were capable of doing, and when they’re done, those people say, “Wow! I had no idea that I could do that. That is unbelievable!”

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Fortune

U.S. regulators told Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV in November 2015 that they suspected some of the automaker’s vehicles were equipped with secret software allowing them to violate emission control standards, according to emails disclosed on Friday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board accused Fiat Chrysler in January of using the software, known as a “defeat device,” to illegally allow excess diesel emissions in 104,000 U.S. 2014-2016 Jeep Grand Cherokees and Dodge Ram 1500 trucks.

Byron Bunker, director of the EPA’s Transportation and Air Quality compliance division, said in a January 2016 email to Fiat Chrysler, obtained by Reuters under the Freedom of Information Act, that he was “very concerned about the unacceptably slow pace” of the automaker’s efforts to explain high nitrogen oxide emissions from some of its vehicles.

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New York Daily News

Jaguar Land Rover is the latest automaker to enter the autonomous vehicle testing fray.

The British luxury brand’s InMotion Ventures mobility services company announced a $25 million investment yesterday into expanding Lyft’s technology plans, allowing the ride-hailing company to test self-driving cars. As part of the partnership, Lyft gets a fleet of Jaguar and Land Rover models to conduct testing of mobility services and autonomous vehicles.

Lyft is no stranger to partnering with automakers on self-driving and ride-sharing services.

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The Gazette

More than 700 young children have died in hot cars since 1998.

The news accounts of these incidents are gut-wrenching, describing helpless toddlers and infants trapped inside scorching vehicles that turn into death chambers. The parents, upon discovering their children, are devastated.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) wants to put an end to these traumas.

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The New York Times

Swiveling seats? Movies projected across the windshield? Social media feeds on the windows?

As driverless car technology develops, companies, design institutes and researchers are asking the question: What does the car of the future look like on the inside?

With companies like Google, Uber and others racing ahead to develop fully autonomous vehicles, the era of the driver hunched over the steering wheel may eventually give way to a living room on wheels.

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Reuters

California and other states would be barred from setting their own rules governing design and testing of self-driving cars, while federal regulators would be blocked from demanding pre-market approval for autonomous vehicle technology, according to a U.S. House Republican proposal reviewed by Reuters on Thursday.

The draft legislation, while far from becoming law, still represents a victory for General Motors Co, Alphabet Inc, Tesla Inc and other automakers and technology companies seeking to persuade Congress and the Trump administration to pre-empt rules under consideration in California, New York and other states that could limit deployment of self-driving vehicles.

The industry also opposed an Obama administration proposal last year that raised the possibility of giving regulators the power to review and approve self-driving car technology before it was put into service, similar to the vetting by Federal Aviation Administration of new technology for aircraft.

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Part two of a three-part series on negligent entrustment: How to build a strong, enforceable safety policy.

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

In part one of my negligent entrustment series, I outlined the main grounds for a fleet-related negligent entrustment case. In this part, I will outline how to build a strong safety policy that a fleet manager can properly enforce. If you do not make a safety policy that is transparent, fair, and evenly enforced, you will leave your company open to negligent entrustment liability, and a host of other issues.

Start building a better safety policy by involving as many levels of the fleet structure as possible, including top executives, HR, legal, risk managers, and even field managers and drivers.

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Wired

Many of us share some dim apprehension that the world is flying out of control, that the center cannot hold.

Raging wildfires, once-in-1,000-year storms, and lethal heat waves have become fixtures of the evening news and all this after the planet has warmed by less than 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.

But here’s where it gets really scary.

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