By Art Liggio, President, Driving Dynamics

While vehicle types, traffic conditions and behavioral issues have greatly changed since the first driver education course in 1934, just how well have we kept up with preparing people to drive safely—especially those who spend hours each week behind-the-wheel for work?

As a fleet operator (non-CDL), do you think, based on an average of only six hours of formal behind-the-wheel training, the drivers in your fleet have come to you with an optimum level skill to operate a vehicle safely? Are these great drivers?

Most additional experience gained has been self-taught. These self-learned behaviors may include taking shortcuts around traffic rules, ignoring dangerous weather-related road conditions, and perhaps achieving a level of comfort with risky or distracted driving habits. Spend any time on the road and you’ve likely experienced a multitude of safe driving quality control deficiencies that are the product of this “curriculum.”

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

Ready for some math? You may not think math has anything to do with customer service and continuous improvement, but it certainly does!

Before you groan over a math lesson, give me a chance to explain. It starts with my dog, Fred. Fred is a Shepherd / Labrador mix that loves to go on walks with me. It was during one of these walks that I discovered a podcast from Tom Ziglar (son of Zig). During one of his episodes, he shared a simple formula that resonated with me and that I continue to apply:

• Attitude x Effort x Skill = Results
• Each attribute is given a rating from 0 to 3
• The optimal result would be a great Attitude (3) x unwavering Effort (3) x expertise in your Skill (3) would give you a Result of a 27
• Anything less, is well, less.

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The Washington Post

Just how old is that hooptie in your driveway?

The average vehicle on American roads is nearly 12 years old, market research shows, as drivers hold on to their old, reliable wheels for longer stretches of time. That has held true even as more people than ever bought new cars last year — 17.5 million of them.

The most popular vehicles today are getting bigger in size, generating reams of data and, more and more often, pestering you to drive better. The vehicles built for the future — those that are merely bold concepts today — will be even more peculiar and provocative.

In the past two weeks, the CES technology conference in Las Vegas and the North American International Auto Show in Detroit offered tremendous insight into where automotive trends stand today and where they appear to be headed in the years to come. Below are seven trends every driver should have on his or her radar, whether looking to make a trade-in or just gawking at what’s on the road.

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The Detroit Bureau

With the transformation of mobility gaining momentum, Uber’s potential for growth is immense; one of the company’s top executives told the annual Automotive News World Congress.

Shant Marakby, a former Ford Motor Co. executive who is now Uber’s vice president of global vehicle programs, said Uber’s ride-sharing business has caught on and continues to expand In cities such as New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris.

Further, the company expects to expand even more by adding autonomous vehicles in the future and help curb the use of surge pricing, which is unpopular with customers.

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The Mercury News

Self-driving cars from Google spin-off Waymo have become far more capable of handling roadway hazards over the past year, with incidents of human backup drivers having to take control plunging 400 percent.

That’s according to Waymo CEO John Krafcik, who also announced that the firm has dramatically cut the cost of its self-driving systems by making hardware in-house.

“This is critical as we look to commercialize self-driving technology,” Krafcik said Sunday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

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Fortune

The cars receiving their U.S. and world premieres during the press days at the 2017 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which wrapped up this week, offered a glimpse of the short and medium-term future of the automotive industry.

There was no one vehicle that dominated the show, although the 2018 Kia Stinger GT, Lexus LS 500, and 2018 Toyota Camry received a lot of attention along with a few couple of interesting concepts and Pixar’s life-size model of star Lighting McQueen

The automakers that decided to skip Detroit were as much a story leading up to the show, as the companies that did have reveals.

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The Detroit News

Traffic deaths surged about 8 percent in the first nine months of last year, continuing an alarming upward spiral that began in late 2014, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates released Friday.

The sharp increase comes at the same time Americans are putting more miles on the road than ever, the government said. But the rise in deaths is outpacing the increase in travel. Vehicle miles traveled in the first nine months of 2016 rose about 3 percent.

Experts believe the increased travel is mostly a result of an improved economy and low gas prices. But NHTSA’s data experts said increased travel and an improved economy alone can’t explain the rise in deaths.

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Bloomberg

Volkswagen AG might have stayed clear of the diesel cheating that led to the worst crisis in its history had the company not pulled out of a promising deal with Daimler AG more than a decade ago.

Led by former Chief Executive Officer Bernd Pischetsrieder, Volkswagen examined strategic options for tie-ups and cooperation projects in 2005, a time when the company was undergoing painful restructuring.

The deliberations included senior-level talks on a possible deal with its German rival that would have given it access to Daimler’s diesel technology and could have even included cross-shareholdings of about 10 percent, according to people who were involved in the discussions.

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

Predictive Analytics is nothing new, but the application of predictive techniques has been seeping into every facet of business and government operations.

The market for predictive analytics technologies tripled, from 11 billion to 35 billion dollars, from 2000 to 2012. It is now estimated that the US alone will need 190,000 more analytics experts and 1.5 million more data-literate managers by 2018. These figures are derived from FICO analytics.

In the past few years, however, even predictive analytics is progressing. It has given way to prescriptive analytics. This change is more than wordplay, introducing a more proactive approach to data analysis. For fleet safety decision-makers, a prescriptive approach introduces a customized process for effectively identifying and remediating hidden high-risk drivers within a specific organizational culture.

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Business Insider

There’s no question that self-driving cars are coming — the real debate at this point is who will get there first.

We rounded up a whopping 20 companies — from traditional automakers to Silicon Valley start-ups — who are working to build a self-driving car by 2021. Naturally, when we will see a fully driverless car hinges just as much on the regulatory environment as advancements in self-driving tech.

But companies are plowing ahead with getting their self-driving cars ready by as early as 2021.

READ MORE to see all the players in the self-driving car space: