At the Qualcomm Vision 2008 user conference in San Diego on Feb. 11, C.R. England, the largest and fastest-growing refrigerated carrier in the nation, unveiled its novel approach for targeting risk in its fleet of more than 5,000 drivers. Chad England, vice president of safety, training and recruiting for C.R. England, spoke before a large group of Qualcomm users.
In March, 2007, C.R. England partnered with Qualcomm Enterprise Solutions and FleetRisk Advisors-a firm that provides advanced risk-based analytics for the transportation industry – to turn safety into a science. The companies helped C.R. England develop a Predictive Performance Services (PPS) program. The PPS uses predictive modeling and other forms of analytics to create unique information that is linked to C.R. England’s existing business systems.
PPS was built using existing electronic data. Over 1,800 data elements were extracted from the C.R. England computer systems and put together into a C.R. England-specific relational data base to facilitate modeling and analytics. Using past accident information, FleetRisk Advisors used predictive analytics to identify patterns in past accidents to build a model for risk. The model is also applied to current driver data to score and rank each driver on their likelihood of having a preventable accident in the next 28 days.
The PPS program also incorporates severity-based data from the Circadian Model to measure driver fatigue. Safety and driver managers are also provided with additional data that explains which predictors are influencing the driver score that week, and points the manager to a specific recommended countermeasure.
To manage the program, C.R. England developed an AS400-based software system that tracks driver performance, fatigue, and the series of countermeasures that managers are required to perform on drivers that the system identifies for risk, England said.
Since the PPS program began in approximately June of 2007, preventable accidents are down 15.37 percent, accidents per driver are down 22.31 percent and accidents per million miles are down 11.86 percent.
“Eliminating just one accident annually more than covers the cost of the program,” England said.
More about the program C.R. England developed will be made available in the April 2008 issue of CCJ Magazine.
