Safety Motivational Speaker Tip – Driving Fatigue

As a safety motivational speaker, I have taught the principle called “Opportunity Teaching.” This is where you take advantage of events in the news locally or internationally to teach a safety point. This week, an opportunity to discuss a safety issue occurred from watching the television show, America’s Got Talent. If you haven’t watched the July 11th episode of the show, there are spoilers in this article. For those of you who have never watched the show, it is basically a talent show which has been running for many seasons.

On Tuesday night, the last performer was a physician named Brandon Rogers. Click Here to see his audition video ( https://youtu.be/tAYrh-x7UKo ). He sang a song and the judges were thrilled. One judge who is in the music business said Brandon was the best singer they had heard this season. He left the stage victorious. Following the closing credits, a dark screen was filled with a dedication to Brandon Rogers and listed his date of birth and death. I was shocked. It didn’t say what had happened so I quickly looked it up on the internet.

The doctor was a passenger with two other physicians driving home after working late. The driver fell asleep and ran into a tree. The other passenger and the driver survived and Brandon died of injuries from the crash.

Fortunately, no other persons were injured or involved. In my career as a safety motivational speaker, I have met other speakers in different fields who had suffered catastrophic injuries because of a driver falling asleep. Knowing this has shaped how I deal with driving and fatigue.

My Personal Strategy

I always pull over to a safe, lighted place to rest at the earliest signs of fatigue while driving. I park, turn the car off, and sleep until I wake up. I now place a towel over the steering wheel as one time I woke up and in a daze saw the wheel in front of me and didn’t realize I was parked. I grabbed the wheel to regain control of the car before I realized I was safe. That really woke me up. I’m sure the extra dose of adrenaline helped keep me awake for the rest of my drive.

As a safety motivational speaker, I take measures to be sure I or anyone I love will never be in a situation where they are tempted to try and drive when they shouldn’t. For example, right out of college my son had a management position with a retail company. This meant he would be working on Christmas Eve every year. For the past several years, my wife and I drove to Southern California where he lives and spent the day resting at his house. At 11:00 pm we picked him up and made the drive north to Galt, California so we could all enjoy Christmas morning at my daughter’s house with the grand kids.

I knew his desire to get to the morning celebrations might cloud his judgement and I didn’t want him to take that chance.

Please take the time to discuss with your employees the importance of stopping when they feel tired.

Other strategies I use include always allowing extra time when I must drive a long distance so if I am tired I have the time to stop and rest. As a safety speaker, I never want to find myself being forced to push on due to poor scheduling. I am sure you can think of other strategies.

Solutions For Your Safety Challenges
When you need solutions for your safety challenges, give Diane Weiss a call at 209-745-9419 and bring John to your site to discover injury-preventing solutions. You can email her at diane@drebinger.com
Until next week,
I’ll be, “Watching Out For Everyone’s Safety™”
John
© 2017 John Drebinger Presentations
Permission to use granted when credited and contact information included. www.drebinger.com +1 209.745.9419