TRB's Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 11: Impact of Behavior-Based Safety Techniques on Commercial Motor Vehicle Drivers explores various strategies designed to increase safety-related driving behaviors and decrease at-risk driving behaviors of commercial motor vehicle drivers. The report also examines innovative and successful behavior-based safety practices in commercial vehicle settings.

The purposes of this research is to gain an understanding of behavior-based safety (BBS) principals and to determine its applicability to the measurement and management of commercial motor vehicle driver performance and safety. As such, the contractor conducted a series of 3 presentations on BBS in late-August 1998. Two presentations were conducted at the HQ Department of Transportation and one was conducted at HQ American Trucking Associations Foundation, Inc. A question and answer session followed each presentation. As discussed during the presentations, BBS employs "benchmark" behaviors that are identified as safety or productivity-critical. The organization then focuses on these benchmark behaviors for purposes of driver self-management, general management, corrective training and/or rewards. For example, if vehicle highway speed were identified as a safety-critical benchmark behavior, speed would be monitored and both drivers and their managers would receive frequent feedback on the drivers's degree of speed compliance. Gas mileage is another example of a benchmark behavior. BBS methods have been implemented with great success in industrial setting and have tremendous potential for improving safety and productivity in the trucking industry. The potential benefits for the trucking community are even more pronounced if BBS principles are used in conjunction with new or soon to be available, in-vehicle technologies (e.g. actigraphs, alertness monitors and electronic on-board recorders) which potentially provide safety-relevant and/or productivity-relevant behavior/performance benchmark information.

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