Free Materials to Combat Distracted Driving
Organizations can download the Drive Safely Work Week 2010 Tool Kit free of charge through Sept. 20 when they complete a simple online survey. The week is a partnership of NETS and DOT, which will present a Distracted Driving Summit on Sept. 21.
Drive Safely Work Week 2010, a partnership of the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS) will take place Oct. 4-8. Its focus is the dangers of distracted driving, particularly as related to the use of cell phones and texting. The 2010 DSWW tool kit can be downloaded free through Sept. 20 at http://www.trafficsafety.org/dsww-materials when they complete a simple online survey.
The tool kit offers tools and activities for each day of the campaign week. Fact/tip sheets, interactive quizzes, communications messages, and downloadable graphics are included.
"DSWW is a signature Network of Employers for Traffic Safety program dating back to 1996. It has no cost, or next to no cost, for everybody out there in the United States," said NETS Executive Director Jack Hanley. "This year is especially relevant because Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is particularly interested in doing something about all the distracted driving out there, especially cell phone use and texting. I think [texting] is Russian roulette, frankly."
DOT has announced its second Distracted Driving Summit will take place Sept. 21 in Washington, D.C. LaHood and DOT held the first one last year.
"His program, and his leadership, and his vocal support for doing something about it is great. We convinced him that maybe we should take a business approach to this," Hanley said. "A business approach says, maybe we can give companies the tools that they need to put together a coherent and rational cell phone or distracted driving policy, number one, and then also we could start to develop a database so that we can develop a baseline.
"We want to get the message of Drive Safely Work Week out there to as many organizations and companies as possible because we think most of them will have an opportunity to take advantage of it. And the more of these surveys that are completed prior to downloading the materials -- and the materials are free to download -- the bigger our database."
With the took kit, organizations can prepare to launch a new cell phone policy; reinforce an existing policy; or build awareness about distracted driving and create policies for minimizing the risks, according to NETS.