This yr, the Fleet Forward Conference Safety Talks centered around people and connections.
With a legacy born from the Fleet Safety Conference, safety is in FFC’s DNA. Across this yr’s safety sessions, one central theme kept resurfacing: Fleet safety improves fastest when it’s treated as a human promise backed by systems.
Whether speakers approached the difficulty through leadership, risk, data, change management, and even comedy, the message was that folks drive safety outcomes, and systems sustain them.
Here’s how safety expert panelists illustrated that theme:
Safety begins with leadership that treats it as a human commitment.
Bill Sims, the 2025 Safety Keynote Speaker, delivered a message on the importance of safety culture and what constitutes strong leadership. Sims centered his message on the concept that when employees imagine their leaders genuinely care about them, they put forth discretionary effort, turning secure driving from a rule right into a shared standard.
Dubbed “servant leadership,” this type of leadership fosters a culture of dignity and respect by which dispatchers, managers, and frontline supervisors consistently reinforce secure behaviors.
The important thing takeaway for industry leaders is to pair data and accountability with structured recognition and training that construct buy-in, strengthen culture, and sustain safer decisions long after a program’s initial rollout.
Data is just powerful when it connects to real people.
Within the Fleet Safety Masterclass, John Wuich of Wheels and Eric Richardson, a security consultant and former fleet safety award winner, demonstrated easy methods to connect and analyze large datasets and collision rates to indicate how data can improve risk exposure.
In addition they discussed how telematics can reduce speeding, harsh events, miles driven, and seat-belt noncompliance.
Richardson emphasized, nevertheless, that statistics alone don’t make the difference. It’s once you connect that data to real folks that you create empathy and memory, which drive higher selections. By pairing trendlines with real names, real families, and real consequences, leaders could make safety unforgettable.
Cross-functional alignment turns safety right into a defensible, repeatable system.
Kimberly Fisher, fleet manager for NOV Inc., and Angelique Maggi of Element approach safety as an organizational alignment issue that always creates more problems than solutions. Fisher and Maggi used a real-world loss scenario that illustrated how a single crash can trigger pressure from legal, risk, and executive leadership, and the way that chain of events often demands inconceivable outcomes.
The central message: Liability can’t be eliminated, but it may possibly be mitigated through cross-functional ownership and clear, consistent controls that show the organization takes driver and public safety seriously.
They advisable removing internal silos by constructing a routine. Implement a structured claims review system and ensure consistent policy enforcement. A safer fleet is less complicated to defend.
Change management works when it’s behaviorally grounded, not logistically convenient.
Dr. Allison Betts of ABA Technologies focused her session on why organizations can fail when implementing changes. Firms face many competing priorities, making it difficult to implement latest policies and tools.
Her framework is rooted in behavior science and emphasizes linking “goal behaviors” to meaningful business and human outcomes. She says that explaining why a change matters results in greater compliance than simply telling your employees that a change has been made. As touched on before, making personal connections greatly improves the end result of any safety initiative.
Identifying environmental barriers that cause unsafe shortcuts and constructing a rollout plan that features training, feedback, and training are also obligatory to successfully implement any change.
Training sticks when it’s emotional, interactive, and memorable.
Steve Verret of IMPROVLearning brought some levity to safety using interactive comedy to deliver a message about why traditional training often fails. As a substitute of lecturing, he moved people forward, turned off phones, and used games to make safety facts memorable.
The purpose? Retention drives outcomes: If drivers don’t remember the message within the moment of temptation, the policy doesn’t matter.
Under the humor is a serious topic — cellphone distraction stays a every day, widespread threat, and reducing that risk requires greater than signage and reminders.
If training is interactive, repeated, and emotional, persons are more prone to remember it and follow it.
This Article First Appeared At www.automotive-fleet.com
