The Where the Rubber Meets the Road (WTRMTR) campaign was awarded the 2015 Award for Excellence in Performance from the Association of Governmental Risk Pools (AGRiP) at AGRiP’s Governance and Leadership Conference held March 9.
The award was presented for the program’s outstanding development, management and implementation.
WTRMTR began in 2010 with 15 members to confront two serious issues. First, motor vehicle crashes are the number one cause of occupational fatalities. Second, at the time, automobile losses accounted for nearly half of all claims costs for VMLIP.
“We began this campaign to address safe driving among members of our program – including cities, towns, counties, schools, and other governmental entities,” said VMLIP Director of Safety Services Beth Rosenthal. “Today we have 62 members enrolled, and we have trained more than 33,000 local government drivers on defensive driving skills.”
WTRMTR was developed to address driver behavior – the sole or partial cause of nearly 95 percent of crashes according to the American Journal of Public Health. The campaign requires participating member entities to provide VMLIP-approved defensive driving instruction to at least 90 percent of their drivers within the first year of joining the campaign.
Each year thereafter, these entities must continue to provide 50 percent of drivers with a minimum of one-hour of instructional driver training.
“As drivers previously trained retire or change job duties, it’s important that we continue to encourage our members to train new drivers and provide refresher courses for current drivers,” says Rosenthal.
The campaign has been tremendously valuable to VMLIP members. Since implementation, automobile loss ratios have been cut nearly in half – from 86 to 48 percent. Among the member entities who were the first to join the campaign – some with the largest and most challenged fleets – loss ratios have dropped from 96 to 46 percent.
“The demonstrated effectiveness of this program in a major area of liability concern for pools across AGRiP’s membership makes it a significant contribution to pooling, on the whole,” said Ann Gergen, Executive Director of AGRiP. “The ability to share the program with other public entity risk pools is also very valuable, and we look forward to providing additional opportunity for pool-to-pool sharing at future events, to allow other pools to utilize and benefit from VMLIP’s innovative idea.”
The campaign is continuing to evolve. In 2013, WTRMTR launched a pilot program designed to transfer classroom training and defensive driving principles into real-work situations through GPS telematics data collection. Within the next year, WTRMTR plans to introduce the use of simulation to the driver-training program.
The Association of Governmental Risk Pools (AGRiP) is the premiere national membership organization for public entity risk and benefits pools in North America, and beyond. AGRiP promotes pooling as a practical extension of local government’s obligation to be a good steward of public funds, provides a forum for intergovernmental issues of mutual interest in the administration and operation of self-funded and group insurance purchasing programs, and other programs associated with the funding and operation of intergovernmental risk and benefit pools.
For more information about the WTRMTR campaign, visit: www.vrsa.us.
VMLIP offers more than just coverage. We are partners in risk management. How does your insurer stack up? Having all lines of coverage with VMLIP ensures that your organization is receiving comprehensive coverage and a wide variety of value-added services tailored to Virginia’s local governmental entities. Call for a quote today: (800) 963-6800. For more information on VMLIP visit: www.vrsa.us or follow us on Facebook.
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