Winter Driving Safety w/ Randy Klatt

Every time winter comes around, the number of traffic accidents increases. MEMIC Loss Control Director Randy Klatt shares how you can drive to save lives, time and money, despite the conditions around you and the actions of others. Since his experiences in emergency medicine and as an active duty Navy pilot and aircraft crash investigator, Klatt has been on a mission to prevent the tragic consequences of unsafe attitudes and behavior. “As a 20-year-old paramedic responding to calls for help, I quickly realized that human failure is behind the majority of injuries,” says Klatt. “As a safety professional I know there are no accidents, only predictable outcomes. No one wants to be hurt, but many do not understand how preventable injuries really are. Peter Koch:  Hello listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. Winter driving can be a big challenge and we see an increase in the number of traffic accidents every winter. So today we're going to dig deep into what it takes to be a safe driver this winter. For today's episode, Winter Driving Safety. I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region II Loss Control at MEMIC to be a better driver this winter. Randy has over 40 years of experience working in industries where safety is critical to success. His career spans emergency medicine, active duty Navy pilot, commercial airline pilot and an aviation safety instructor at the university level. Randy has worked with MEMIC since 2003 and is the current director of Region II at Loss Control, leading a team of consultants serving the Central and Southern Maine area. Randy, welcome to the podcast today. Randy Klatt: Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here. Peter Koch: Fantastic. So, we're gonna jump right into it. So, I appreciate you being here, but we're gonna throw a question at you right off the bat. Randy Klatt: Okay. Peter Koch: Does the environment actually cause traffic accidents, driving accidents? Randy Klatt: No. Peter Koch: Thank you very much. Randy, I appreciate you coming today. Randy Klatt: That's all I have to say for today. Peter Koch: Why not? Cause you see it all there all the time like people talk about, well, it was the snow, or it was the fog, or it was the rain. I hydroplaned. I skidded. I did this and the car flipped over. I hit the car in front of me. Whatever happened there, there's always a this before that. Randy Klatt: Yeah, there always is. And I see claims injuries like that all the time. Often there's verbiage in the claims description that says something like the car left the roadway, the car flipped over, the car skidded on the ice. And of course, my immediate thought is I don't think the car does those things without the driver putting it in that position. So, some people would say that, oh, this is an unreasonable expectation that I'm being way too hard on people. Well, from my perspective, no, weather does not cause accidents. In fact, we don't call them accidents. Some people do. I prefer to call them predictable outcomes if you are not driving for the conditions, it's almost inevitable that we're going to have some problems. So, I grant you that we are human beings. Humans make mistakes. I could make a mistake. I could end up in a fender bender this winter because I made a mistake. And so, I'm not looking for blame.  I'm not saying that people who are in traffic accidents in the wintertime are, are less than capable of driving, or that I blame them for all the problems. That's not really the point. The point is that it is preventable if we do the right things and that driving, especially in the winter, is very hazardous. There's, there's no doubt about that. The weather does make road conditions more challenging. It does present a hazard that isn't there in the summertime. But if we address it and if we do something about it, we're much, much more likely to get to where we're going and get home safely without any incidents. So, my answer is, and this is the way I would like people to look at it overall, really for any injury, any accident, any incident that occurs, it's preventable.  And if I look at it that way, it's a preventable situation. That means that I have to take responsibility to do the prevention piece. And if I do that, I'm much more likely to be safe throughout all my activities.  If I look at it as "Awe gee, it is raining or it's snowing today, the roads icy, I'm probably going to get in an accident today. It's inevitable."  Then I'm much more likely to do just that. So, let's look at it as all preventable and that will go a long way towards actually driving safely. So that's my very long answer to a very short question, but it's a very fundamental question to our topic today. Weather doesn't cause it. People do. Peter Koch: Yeah, I think that's a really good point and a great start. So, would you say, and if we think about driving overall, and we're talking about environment now as a contributor, not as the cause, but a potential contributor to an accident.  And in that light, could you say that driving is a series of conscious and unconscious decisions that we make to get from point A to point B? Randy Klatt: I would say that's an accurate description. I would hope that most things are conscious. But yes, we get into a mindset of we've done this a million times. We know how to drive. If you're an experienced driver that's certainly true. So, some of our behaviors are, I think you could say they are subconscious or almost autonomous. We don't really think so much about what we're doing. So, if you've ever missed your exit, you've driven there 100 times, but suddenly you drive by and you go, oh gee whiz, I suppose to get off there. That's should tell you that you're driving autonomously there. You were you weren't really driving, actually, Sir Isaac Newton was in the driver's seat at that moment, and you were just along for the ride. So, we do a good portion of that. And if you happen to be doing that when the road conditions aren't very good. Now we've given up our responsibility as the driver. We've succumbed to the conditions and basically said, "Well, if it happens, it happens." And that's certainly not a philosophy that I would like any driver to adopt because I don't want him hitting me either. So, we really have to engage more carefully in driving overall. Just look at the numbers. 40,000 people a year dying in traffic accidents in this country, 13 million crashes each year, about half of those resulting in police reporting and about almost 2 million people who are injured in traffic accidents every year. So, this is something that costs society over $250 billion dollars every year. It's ridiculous that in today's day and age, we haven't gotten a handle on this. And when you add weather into it, the tendency is just to say, well, it was weather. That's what caused it. And you usurp your own responsibility. And that's not right. Peter Koch: No, not at all. Not at all. So, if weather isn't the problem but the person's the problem is the answer just autonomous vehicles should we just take the driver right out of it?  Or what are the responsibilities that a driver would have in order to keep that vehicle going forward? Randy Klatt: Now, very good point. I think remember Randy said this in 2000, whatever this is now, that yes, autonomous vehicles are probably going to be the predominant vehicle on the road and in the future, I don't know when that's going to be, I don't know how many years it'll be, but that's the way we are going, clearly. And if an autonomous vehicle takes the person out of the out of the formula, out of the equation, we are going to have safer roadways. There's no doubt about that. If everybody is in an autonomous vehicle. So, the way I usually do that analogy is I come from aviation. That was my background. I flew in the military for a long time. I flew commercial airlines. And knowing aviation safety like I do, I know that, oh take World War II for example, we lost almost as many pilots in crashes as we did in combat. Aviation had not developed into a very sophisticated science even at that point. We're only talking 60, 70 years ago. Look at aviation today. We have almost no crashes. I would challenge anyone listening here to tell me when the last airline crash was in the United States from a U.S. carrier. And you're going to find, hmmmm I don't really remember. We've lost three people in 10 years in major airline crashes in the United States, and one was a freight carrier. Both pilots perished and the other was Asiana Airlines in San Francisco. So, we've made and that was a fatality, unfortunately, on the ground. A person was hit by the fire truck as they evacuated the aircraft. So, when we look at those numbers you know, the millions and millions of people that fly every year, and we've made that industry extremely safe.  We've, we've done that through for the most part through automation, through technology. And I can see the same thing happening in driving that we have now developed adaptive cruise control and blind spot monitoring systems and an automatic emergency braking system and all these things that are in theory making our driving safer. And I think they are to a point. But what I don't want to see happen is that the driver starts to give up their responsibility as a driver because they know the technology will take care of them. And so, when we do see airplane crashes today, it's because that's exactly what's happened. I flew 737s. I didn't fly the Max 8, but I flew the 500 model. And I can tell you that a pilot who knows what he's doing, is well trained, would not fly that thing into the ground no matter what the system was doing. So today, when we have drivers who are relying on technology in the same way, we're gonna have problems. Fatality numbers are actually going up. The last three or four years, they've gone up every year. Yet technology is getting better. So, there's something else going on there and it has to do with the driver. And we still have to focus on the driver. So, until we can get to a completely autonomous vehicles almost to the point like what we have in autonomous airplanes. There's still a pilot in the seat. But you can, if you can pull back on the yoke and get the airplane off the ground and push a button, you can be an airline pilot. I shouldn't say that, that'll probably offend some of our audience and maybe alarm others who are on airplanes right now.  But we've become computer monitors more than we have than we are pilots. And it makes it very safe because they're very dependable airplanes. But until we get to that point with cars, we have to depend on that driver. And of course, this day and age, we are very dependent. And so that driver has to take that all very seriously. And if you put on your adaptive cruise control and just sit back and relax. But the weather isn't very good. The car doesn't know what the road conditions are. It'll turn itself off if visibility is and isn't high enough.  But if the road is, you know, it's thirty-four degrees outside and there are places where it's just at freezing and there's a little fog or mist and the roads a little icy. The car does not know that. That's a perfect condition for setting you up to crash. And because you took yourself out of the equation and you're going to say that it was the ice that caused it. And that's just not right. Peter Koch: So, a lot of it comes down to the awareness of the driver of the surroundings and that adaptive cruise control example that you brought up, I think is fascinating.  I have it in one of the vehicles that I drive, and you could be on the highway travelling at highway speeds right within the speed limit, set the cruise control. And before you know it, you're behind someone who is going 10 miles an hour below the speed limit. And you never even knew that the car slowed down. You're just maintaining the distance. But people in the passing lane are zipping past you, and then all of a sudden you go, he's going too slow. So, what do you do? You pull out. You go around them, and you override that regardless sometimes of the conditions. Because if you're focused on a conversation that made you not pay attention to what the vehicle is doing and how it's engaging with the road, you probably haven't paid enough attention to your environmental surroundings to know that how fast you're pulling out is actually good for the environmental conditions that you're there. So that technology is super helpful, but it can lull us into that sense of safety that we still have responsibility for, ultimate responsibility for still lies within the driver, which is a great point that you made before. Absolutely right.  So, it always comes down to, as we've said many times in history, it's the nut behind the wheel. It's the driver of the vehicle. You are responsible. And it's an awesome responsibility. Now, in this country in particular, we take it for granted. Everybody does everything in their cars and most families have multiple cars. And we see generally one person in every car on the highway. And we it's just the society that we have. We're big on cars. And that's what is convenient. And that's I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that, except that we do take it for granted the responsibility of actually operating the vehicle. So, I think about your average adult is 30 years old. How much driver training has he actually gotten? Probably went through driver's ed training at 16 to get his permit. And once he got that license, the training stopped with the exception of the OJT that we get every day. And you just hope that the mistakes you make don't result in something horrible. And that's probably not a very good way to run a system. I was actually talking to another consultant just yesterday who lived in Germany for 16 years. You got the Autobahn, right? We have no speed limits.  Their fatality rate is actually fairly high on the Autobahn. But overall, better than United States. And we figured, well, gee, what's the deal there? And he explained very carefully, said it's the driver training. It's the training they have to go through to get a license. You have to be 18 before you can even apply for a license. And it's very rigorous and it costs a lot of money. So, people are very appreciative of the license once they get it. And they're very well-trained as opposed to the United States, where we see it more as an innate right. And of course, you're gonna drive. And if you're 18 in the United States and all we have to do is pass that written test and convince that, inspector, for that 10-minute drive that you're not going to kill anybody. You got a license. You don't really need any training. You know, what's a yellow light do? That's about all you need to know.  And that's just not right. And now we put him out there in a snowstorm and expect them to drive well. I think the realistic expectation is that we're going to have some problems with that unless we really focus on it. Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about how that how the road conditions, the winter road conditions specifically will affect the driver and the choices that they'll have to make in order to keep the vehicle going at a steady rate and making it happen safely. Randy Klatt: Well, we can always look to the hierarchy of safety controls, which might be another podcast topic of in and of themselves. But the first thing in the hierarchy is always to eliminate the hazard. So why would I go out in a snowstorm if I don't have to? That's the number one. I can best control my car if it's in the garage. I don't I don't have to worry about those conditions. Now, I understand that's not always a possibility. And that people do have to be places at times. And so, I don't mean to make a joke out of that by saying we can all stay home. But at least in the northeast where we live, where snow is expected and it's common and it often comes heavy, we have darn good snow clearance systems out there.  And that if you wait an hour or an hour and a half, you'll have a much better environment to drive in than you would have if you just went out your normal time.  So maybe you need to need to delay your trip for a little while. Maybe it's work from home for a few for an hour and then head in later, you know, something like that. So, look to eliminate that hazard in the first place. Inevitably, we'll find ourselves out in the bad weather. So, then what are you going to do? Well, speed is the number one cause of all accidents, and it's certainly going to be magnified when you have poor road conditions. When you think about tires and road surface contact, the tire on the road is the only thing that's touching the road, we hope, of your vehicle. So, if the road is contaminated, so we have ice, we have snow, standing water, whatever it is, we're gonna have less control of that vehicle.  That's just inevitable. And if that's the case, then I darn well better slow down because if I'm driving 60 in a normal day, dry pavement, I better be backing that down somewhat in winter conditions because I know that I'm not going to be able to control my vehicle either in maneuvering, cornering, turning or accelerating or stopping. All those are affected adversely by adverse road conditions. So, number one avoid the hazard.  Number two slow down. Why are we all in such a hurry? Number three would be increase that following distance, increase that safety cushion that you have around you. Because inevitably you will take longer to stop. Other drivers are not going to be so attentive. They are going to take longer to stop. Let's just give ourselves a little bit more room so that we have more time and the car's gonna be able to react a little bit better, have more time to, more space around to react. So those are my three top things. Avoid it. Slow down. Increase your following. Peter Koch: That's fantastic. How does, let's talk a little bit about the sort of the dynamics of that only part, the only part of the road, at least we hope. The only part of the vehicle, at least we hope that is touching the ground are the tires. And how do the winter road conditions affect the tires and maybe a little bit about the different types of tires that are out there? Randy Klatt: Sure. So, I think it's pretty clear to everyone that that road surface contact with the rubber of your tire is what is going to control the vehicle. That's the coefficient of friction that we need to accelerate and to stop and to control it in a turn. And all those things. So as that changes, if you add even something as little as a twenty fifth of an inch of water to the surface of a roadway. Now we don't have nearly the tire contact with the road that we do on a dry surface. So, if you make that little bit of water ice, well, now of course, we have even a lower coefficient of friction. We have less control over what's gonna happen between those two surfaces. So, contamination on the road is a critical element in being able to control my vehicle. And so, then we can, since we can't necessarily control the conditions of the roadway. Now, I did say earlier that if we just wait a little while, the road will probably be better. I always think that if you find yourself out on the road following a snowplow or right behind it or right in front of it, you're probably out there at the wrong time. Let them do their job first and then go out there. That's probably a better way to go. All right, so given that limitation, we can't really control the roadway. So, the only thing I can control then from a contact standpoint, from tire road topic, which is what we're on right now, is the tire itself. So vast majority of vehicles these days we're using all season radial tires.  An all-season tire, just as it implies, is designed for all seasons. It has some performance in hot weather. It has some performance in wet and has some performance in cold or freezing snow conditions. It's not ideal for any one of those. By definition, it's an all-season tire. So, for those climates where we see minimal snow a couple times a year, you might get a little bit of this or that. All season tires is probably appropriate. But for those areas of the country where we see a lot of snow or we see a winter, that can be severe. You might see ice. Now we're probably talking a winter tire, a snow tire, something that's designed for those conditions. And they are vastly different. And we can talk about those differences, if you'd like. Peter Koch: Yeah, I think that would be good. Touch it a little bit about the difference in construction and design of that all-season tire versus the winter tire. And what makes the winter tire a better choice when you know that you're going to encounter these environments more frequently? Randy Klatt: Sure. So, there are innate differences in tread design, but also in material choice and in the rubber compounds that are used. So again, that all season tire is designed to last a long time. It's fairly harder compound. It is designed also though, for comfort because we want our car, you know, we're selling a new car and I want it to be quiet. If I'm riding in a car, if I buy a new car, I want it to be ride comfortably and quiet. And a lot of that depends on your tires. So, they are designed to last quite a while, to be OK in performance in all conditions and to provide comfort and quiet. Whereas a winter tire is really designed for just that. It's designed for worse conditions. So, it's going to have different tread block design. It will have more, more tread blocks that are separated by more space so that we can help avoid hydroplaning so that there's more clearance for snow and water to be dissipated. So, we have tread contact with the surface. There's going to be more siping on the tires all the way around to almost not to the sidewalls, but to the outer portion of the tires and siping. Are those small cuts in the tread blocks that you see? They look like cuts. There are little slits, so that they, they as the tire rolls around and contacts the surface, those Sipes allow the tread block to actually separate slightly and almost grip the road a little bit more. It's ah, imagine an animal that separates its toes and grips in a more efficient way. That's really what that siping does for a tire and a snow tire. And that's going to help increase that contact with the roadway. And then, so we got wider blocks, more tread depth, probably as typical winter tire will come with 10 to 13 thirty-seconds of tread depth to start with. So that's a significant amount of tread. And then lastly, it's a different metal or a different, excuse me, rubber compound. Like I said earlier, it's a softer compound. It's designed to be more supple in cold weather. Your all-season tire is going to harden up when it becomes really cold outside, becomes less flexible. So, less ability to actually stay supple when it contacts the roadway. So, a winter tire will do that for you, which is a great advantage. The reason we don't use those all year, of course, is for those things converse of what I said earlier about they all season tire. A winter tire is not going to last as long, it's a softer compound. So, it's going to wear out faster. You put a rubber tire, or a winter tire on your car in the summertime, it'll wear out very quickly. It's also louder, less comfortable. It's more like driving an all-terrain vehicle or something where you, you don't have nearly the comfort or the ride. So, the compromises that are made with the all-season tire are fine until you get to bad weather. Then I would definitely recommend going to a winter tire that is designed for just that. Peter Koch: And keeping on that line of technology and we have the tires that are the contact between the vehicle on the road and keeps us there. How does vehicle technology and all-wheel drive, smart technology for vehicles like that? How does that help keep that car on the road? Peter Koch: Well, certainly all, I think we all know all wheel drive, or four wheel drive is certainly an advantage in poor weather, but really only an acceleration in gripping the roadway as you're trying to accelerate or to move out to gain traction because you're separating the amount of friction that you need to develop. You're gaining from all four tires now so you can do the math by the square inches of tire contact and divide that by four instead of by two. So, we can really accelerate better you so you can get your car moving better, gets out of parking spots or up little hills or things like that in a more efficient fashion. So, all wheel drive's certainly an advantage in the wintertime. What it doesn't do is help you stop any quicker. So, what vehicle do you typically see in the median or, you know, down the hillside driving down the highway in the wintertime? It's generally a four-wheel drive of some kind.  Because some driver just thought I've got a four-wheel drive, I'm going. And yeah, they go, they just don't stop. So that's an overconfidence feature that sometimes comes with all-wheel drive. It will get going better, but we're not going to stop any better. The other feature we could talk about is antilock brakes. So, ABS systems are standard now and do a fantastic job of stopping a vehicle.  They're very efficient, especially on dry pavement. They'll stop you darn quick. But what they really do. Of course, the real design feature, the purpose of them is to keep those front wheels or steering wheels rolling. So, if I stand on that brake pedal for a panic stop, I'm going to feel the vibration of the pedal. I'm probably going to hear some awful sounding noise. And that's the computer system modulating the flow of brake fluid and preventing those front tires from locking up. They will come to a point where they almost stop and then they'll continue to roll. And then they'll almost stop, and they'll continue. So, they, the modulation of that is really important. That allows those front wheels to continue to turn so that I continue to have steering control. What it doesn't do is help you break any quicker. So, if I'm on a little downhill slope with snow and I step on the brake pedal, I'm going to feel like I'm not stopping because I'm gonna feel that vibration. The car is going to continue to roll and I feel like, oh, my gosh, the speed brakes don't work. I'm not stopping it. Well, you're not stopping any quicker. But what you do have is control of your steering. So, you're remaining in control of your vehicle rather than having it skid into a spin of some kind. So, control is the real advantage to the anti-lock brakes systems, but it will not necessarily help you stop quicker. So that's really important to know. The days when, when I was trained how to drive back a few years ago in driver's training, they would tell us to pump the brake pedal. That's what we used to do. You don't do that anymore. Do not do that when it comes down to anti-lock brakes.  You can stand on the brake pedal and that, those front tires will continue to turn. So, you continue to have steering control. Peter Koch: So, I think it's really interesting as we talk about tire technology, tread and construction, all-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, anti-lock brakes, the different systems and the newer vehicles that are designed to help us be safer in any environment. They are really there to help us maintain control of the vehicle. But in order to really do that, you have to understand the vehicle's limitations in the environment that you're trying to apply them. So, a winter tire versus an all-terrain tire, anti-lock brakes versus computer-assisted or all-wheel drive versus front wheel drive versus rear wheel drive versus four-wheel drive. And how do those things all interact? So, knowledge of the tool that you're using, as well as knowledge of the environment that you're using it in. And then the piece that we typically miss is the understanding our own limitations and how to apply those.  And how fast we react and all those different things. So, it comes right back to the person, the driver, the understanding, and the knowledge, the responsibility of the driver to be able to maintain control of that car. And essentially, those are you know, that is what is going to make us better drivers ultimately in the wintertime. So, let's talk again or a little bit more about those personal things that the driver needs to take into consideration when they are making choices out there on the road. So, what are some things, that are a disadvantage to the driver and maybe an advantage to the driver? Randy Klatt: Well, I would start with this... I was thinking of this as you were speaking just a minute ago here, Peter, about I would ask the question, when was the last time you as a driver actually read your owner's manual? And I can I can see your listeners right now rolling their eyes and saying, what owner's manual? And I ask that question because these cars are not, they're not my '57 Chevy where you just get in and go, because it really isn't a whole lot to it. We do have all this technology, which is fabulous. But you do have to know how to use it and what it will do and what it won't do. Ummm, I actually had a person tell me recently they turned off all of this because it was bugging them. And I said, well, what was going on? And the person said, it just continued to beep at me. And I couldn't, I didn't know what it was, so I turned it off. I thought, OK well, perhaps the answer might have been, why don't you look it up in your manual and actually figure out why it's doing what it's doing. And if you want to turn it off, that's certainly a choice you make as a driver. But understand what it's going to do for you and why you might want to leave it on. Peter Koch: It's funny you mentioned that. If I could just interject for a moment. Randy Klatt: Please. Peter Koch: So, my parents are getting on in age. They're in their 80s. My mom's not quite 80 yet, so she won't be happy when I say that, but yet she's still doing great. She still drives. And a couple of years ago, she got a brand-new car. Well, a leased car. First time ever and it had all the bells and whistles. So, you know, it had the adaptive cruise control and it had the lane avoidance. And so, we got in the car for the first time with her. And she, she kept saying, why is that beeping? Why is it beeping? Why? How do you shut it off? Same thing. She had no idea. And I was like, well, Mom, that's the indicator that you're crossing over the line. So, she was constantly with a tire on or over the white line, or then she would drift over to the center line and she wouldn't notice that because she'd be moving back and forth within the lane. So, once she figured that out, that that was an indicator, now it's she actually does a much better job staying within the lane and concentrating on that. But it took her a little while to get there. And I think we find that we have many older drivers these days. You have many of our parents, in order to stay to stay independent, want to maintain their license and they get a new car. And the last new car that they had and even that could be a used car. The last new car they had was made in the 80s or the 90s, and it had none of that. So, they don't know. And they'll just push the button to turn it off or they'll call, they'll call the dealership and ask him to turn off all those annoying buzzers. And of course, the dealership won't train them. They might just turn it off because that's the request from the customer. Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. Peter Koch: Before I move on from the story with my mom, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk more about how those, those items of technology in the car can assist us maintaining control in the wintertime.   **********************   Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Randy Klatt, Director of Region 2 Loss Control at MEMIC. So, let's jump right back in with more questions. Before the break, we're talking about winter driving and vehicle technology. And we're just going through a story about how vehicle technology could be misunderstood, sometimes shut off because it's misunderstood, or it can actually be a benefit to those who can pay attention to it and understand what it's saying. So, let's talk a little bit more about the vehicle technology and how some of that adaptive technology can help us. Randy Klatt: You made a really good point there, Peter, referring to your mom. I'm afraid that's what sometimes the typical driver will do if you don't understand it. Turn it off and then it won't bother you, me anymore. And of course, then we're just defeating the advanced technology that we have. So, if cars are getting safer, we have to use what makes them safer. So, this is actually a user interface kind of discussion. Cars are safer with crumple zones and anti-lock brakes and, you know, and all those other technologies that are keeping us safer in a crash. But what can I really affect every day? What can I actually do to make my driving safer? And that might be include technology that's available to me as a user, as a driver. And for example, my car that I drive frequently has two levels of lane control assist. The first one will do just as you describe with your mother. It will beep at me and it will show an indicator on the dash that tells me I'm getting too close to the either side stripe of the road or to the centerline. And so that's the first step. That should tell me enough that should tell me all I need to know. That things should never go off. But if it does. Oh, my goodness. I got to get back to the center of the lane. The second thing that it would do if I continued to drift is it would actually control, control my car. It would actually turn my steering wheel back to the center of the lane. So, if you do really become distracted for an extended period of time, the car should be smarter than you are and should turn you back into the lane. And it will actually do that twice. It will control it once. And then if you don't touch the wheel and you start to drift away again, it'll control it a second time. And then if it becomes a third time, it will actually turn itself off and say, I'm sorry, I give up. You're beyond help. So, I like parts of that. I really enjoy, I appreciate the alert when it occurs. Ninety nine percent of time it's because I know that's where I am. I've moved over for some reason or I'm starting to change lanes on the highway, and I neglected to turn on my turn signal. Turn on your turn signal that it's not going to correct you, of course.  What I have actually turned off is the auto control back into the lane, though. I've done it for a purposeful reason. What I found was if I am approaching, for instance, a pedestrian or a cyclist on the shoulder, I want to move over for that person and I'm not going to jerk the wheel over and zip into a lane. I'm going to let the car drift slightly wider and I'm going to let them have more room as I think is appropriate. And assuming there's no car coming the other direction, I might actually approach that center line or even cross it slightly to give room for this pedestrian. Well, when I was doing that and I had the control system on, it steered me back into the lane because it didn't know there was a pedestrian there or trash cans on the side of the road, or whatever it is. So, I found it hard. It was taking me places I didn't really want it to go.  So, I turned that teacher off. But I did it knowingly and consciously and for a reason and not because it just annoyed me. So, use your technology.  Again, read that owner's manual, understand what it is trying to do for you and use it to your advantage. And if you don't like it for a specific reason, a logical reason, not just because I don't like that thing. I don't like being beeped at. Well, then certainly consider adjusting it. Something like adaptive cruise control can be a change. There are settings for how far behind the vehicle in front of you are. So set your following distance.  Course, what we always recommend is the standard three-second rule.  You see the car in front of you pass a sign or a pothole or stripe on the road or something. Count to yourself. One. One thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. You shouldn't be to that same point, that hole in the road or whatever before three seconds. That means you've got that three seconds of following distance behind that car in front of you, and that's really that cushion that you need. When we talk about the reaction times of the human being, it typically to perceive a hazard, understand what it is and then react to it. In other words, move your foot from the accelerator, the brake. Those two actions about a second to a second and a half for most people. If you're at highway speed that's 100, 150 feet you've just traveled, and you haven't done anything to stop your car yet. And if you're in winter conditions where the roadway surface might not be perfect, you've traveled that same distance, but now you're breaking, efficiency is gonna be reduced. So, you're stopping distance is far longer. So, we have to give extra room. So, in the wintertime, I might set that cruise control. Actually, let me take that back. If the road conditions are not very good. Shouldn't use cruise control because again, the car doesn't know that the road conditions aren't very good so it can get you into trouble. But what I will do is back off from that car in front of me and allow that extra following distance because I know I'm not going to be able to stop as quickly. So use the technology to help you if you choose to turn off some of it, you can do so, but don't ever give up your responsibility as a driver to understand what's in front of you, what's behind you and control your car despite the conditions around you. If we look at the definition of defensive driving from the National Safety Council, it's to drive to save lives, time and money despite the conditions and the actions of others. I can't control the drivers. I can't control the weather, but I can control my car. Peter Koch: Those are great points and really thinking about it. If you do drive defensively and not aggressively and there's been tons of studies out there, Mythbusters have done studies out there. The NTSB has done studies out there. Individual car companies have done studies out there about distracted driving, about aggressive driving. How it doesn't actually save time. It doesn't save money. It doesn't save productivity. And it certainly doesn't put you in a safe position to react to a mistake that another driver might make. And if we all reacted defensively or drove defensively, then there would be less mistakes to react to, which would be pretty amazing how efficient the system might actually work. And considering that for a second. Have you ever had the experience driving down the highway where all of a sudden you're driving at the speed limit 65, 70 miles an hour, wherever you are, whatever it is, and you go from there to 30 or 25 and you crawl around for 10 minutes, 15 minutes and you're still moving and you're expecting at some point time to see the reason why there has been a slowdown and all of a sudden traffic opens up and you're back to speed limits. And there's been no accident. There's been no road change. There's been no nothing else. And what's happened are people aren't driving defensively. They're reacting to the problems around you. And if you see brake lights in front of you and you're going really fast, you don't have a good cushion in front of you. You're applying your brake lights, which means the person behind you are applying their brake lights. And it just keeps backing up. And all of a sudden, there's a mile worth of slow down. Randy Klatt: Yes, a mile worth of hurry up and wait. It doesn't make a lot of sense. I see it all the time. When I'm in the right-hand lane, I'm looking down the roadway as everyone should. I'm trying to not just focus on that car in front of me, which is important for following distance, but I'm also looking well down the roadway, so I know what to expect. So, I see brake lights in the distance. I'm, of course, going to back off a little bit. I'm just going to start to slow down. And then there's the driver in the left-hand lane that zips by me going faster than the speed limit was in the first place. And there, you know, here we are a couple hundred yards later and he's jamming on his brakes because now he realizes that he's almost going to hit the car in front of him. I worked with a truck driving company that the owner of the company had 2 million accident free miles in his logbook, very experienced.  And he would like he told me that with his new drivers, what he'd like to do is he would drive from Maine down through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut, down to New York, where they went for a lot of their stops. And he told that student driver and the new driver that he thought he bet that he could drive right through that whole area and never touch his brakes. And of course, none of the guys believed him that that could be possible. And he said he did it all the time because he understood flow. He understands traffic in front of them. He understands speed. He's not going to get there any quicker any way. So why accelerate brake, accelerate brake, if you can just very carefully maneuver through the through the roadway. Keep your following distances. You get there the same time you're beating up your car or your vehicle a lot less. You're using less gas. It just makes good sense. It's also less stressful because when everybody's in a hurry and they're all angry about delays and what might go on ahead of them, then they're angry at each other. And then we have road rage and just, just relax. It's OK. I'll get there about the same time you are anyway. And if you beat me by 30 seconds. Peter Koch: So be it. Randy Klatt: OK. You won the race. That's OK.  I'm going to get there, and I will have saved some money and I'll be a lot better mood when I get where I'm going. So, and when it comes to winter driving. Oh, my gosh. Now, now, let's add that road, those road conditions. So, all of that that I just described, you know, let's multiply that several times for winter driving because we're going to take longer to stop because we might have less visibility. It just makes sense that I'm going to back off a little bit more. Peter Koch: And that that behavior of accelerate brake, accelerate brake, accelerate brake, which happens often whether it's highway driving, primary road driving, secondary road driving really increases your chances of coming unstuck from the roadway.  When I step on the gas, there's a higher demand in order to keep the tires in place or to keep the tire's grip. There's a higher demand for a coefficient of friction when I brake and I have to brake hard, it's the same thing. So, road conditions have, could have road conditions could significantly affect the behavior of the car when the driver behaves in that accelerate brake accelerate brake pattern. Randy Klatt: Exactly right. If you think back to February of 2015, we had a collision on I-95 in the Bangor area in Maine. We ended up with almost 100 cars in that pileup. Peter Koch: I remember that. Randy Klatt: Inconceivable. Not really. There it was. So why did that occur? Well, you read all the reports and take a look at what the state police had to say. And clearly, they would say, all right well, weather was probably a contributing factor. And we know it was because it was poor weather. It was February. It was snowing. But had the people driving through that area been driving for the conditions, the flashing lights on the interstate. We know when those say 45 miles an hour. Now, that's advisory only. Well, had people slowed down some and increased their following distance, we never would have had that occur and we might have had a collision. So whatever caused that in the very beginning or the first vehicle was to lose control, hit somebody else, that might have been it because everyone else behind, had they been driving appropriately for the conditions, they should have been able to avoid that pileup. But then you get two and three and then you get four and you get five. And then before you know it, you're stuck in the middle because you actually driving well, you had plenty of following distance. You could stop, but the driver behind you couldn't. So now you end up in the middle of this, too. So again, we can't influence the driver behind other than increase my following distance in front of me so that if I have to stop, I can do it more gradually. I don't have to jam on my brakes in a panic. Therefore, the driver behind me will have more time to be able to stop. So even if they're tailgating me, I'm hopeful that my actions can help prevent him from hitting me. So, it just fundamental driving safely, driving defensively, especially in winter conditions. Peter Koch: But you might say, Randy. But, Randy, if I increase my following distance, what's going to happen? Someone will pull right in front of me. So, I might just as well keep my speed so that I don't give enough room for someone else to make it more challenging for me. So, what do you say to that? Randy Klatt: Sure. Yeah, I've had people tell me ahhh, if I did that, I'd be driving backwards because everybody would be pulling in front of me. The truth of the matter is that doesn't happen. It does happen that people will pull in front of you and fill that space throughout your driving time. At sometimes they will. So, at sometimes, if you are providing 3 minute, 3 seconds of following distance and someone pulls in front of you, you've lost your three seconds. But I'd be willing to bet that if you're following the speed limits or even less if the conditions are worse, that that space will open right back up in front of you again pretty quickly, because the person that passed you is probably one of those people that's in a hurry. They're going to get by no matter what. They'll pull in front of you. They'll accelerate. And you'll have your three seconds back in a matter of seconds. There are times when it might be two. There might be one. And as long as you're aware, you go Oh my gosh. Okay. I got to slow down a little bit more now. I gotta increase it. OK. Now I've got it back to two. There's two and a, there's three. Now I can continue on my way. It'll be it'll be fine. And I've done this for years and I drive all through the Northeast. So that includes Connecticut and New York and Massachusetts and down to Washington, D.C. and all the traffic areas that you can imagine where everyone is in a hurry. And I've never found it to be a hindrance to me. I've never found that I'm causing any real problems. If I was driving 55 on the interstate when everyone else wants, should be driving 70 or is driving 70 now, I'm a hazard that I would not recommend. But simply maintain speed limit. I'll give you a couple miles over if you really feel important. That's OK. But I'm going to maintain that following distance no matter what. And everybody else will be driving faster anyway. So, my time will get back. Peter Koch: I've had that same experience and having a conversation with you about that a number of years ago. Testing that out actually coming out of Washington, D.C. to go see one of one of my accounts down there. So, coming out of the airport, driving through heavy traffic and staying at the speed limit for the conditions. And it was summertime. So, the road conditions were great. Heavy traffic. And if I stayed at the speed limit and drove defensively, kept that cushion, people would pull in front of me. And within a few seconds, I'd have that cushion back and people would just keep falling and in front of me. And you would essentially catch up with someone later on down the road, because there was going to be a traffic congestion that caused a slowdown. And you could see him up 10, 15, 20, 30 cars up ahead. But they weren't miles and miles and miles and miles ahead of you. Randy Klatt: No, they weren't. And especially in the northeast where, you know, there's tollbooth every couple of miles. So, you know what the heck you know that you're gonna be right behind that person that just passed you in such a hurry and disappears down the hill in a mile, you know, because you're if you're from the area particularly, you think, OK, well, there's a tollbooth in about three miles. I know who's gonna be right in front of me. It just it doesn't make any sense to try to fight it. Another consultant that taught driving overseas, talking about doing that with his students. And, you know, when you drive to work tomorrow and drive the way you always do and write down your time and then the next day, drive following every rule, follow the speed limit, give your distance, blah, blah, blah and then write down the time and then tell me what the difference is.  For him and that experience over the years, it was only a couple of minutes, even by the math the difference between fifty-five miles an hour and seventy-five miles an hour on a ten-mile trip is only four minutes difference. And that assumes constant speed, which you'll never be able to do anyway. So, in the winter, this becomes even more important. We should not have ninety-five or one hundred cars piled up in a collision like that. If people are driving the way, they should be driving. Peter Koch: And a lot of that is preparation. You talk about that the individual who wants to gain a little bit of time is going to get a little bit of a little bit faster. Chances are they made that decision when they left the house that morning. And grant that it might not have been their decision, but they made the decision to try to make up for that time, whether it because they got up late, because they had a problem at home, because there was something else going on, they chose to make up that time in the most dangerous thing that we're gonna do any day, which is getting a car drive. And if we think about all of the decisions that have to keep us on the road. Right. So that the tools that the car gives us are tires and technology, we still have to have a pilot. And that pilot in there is that essential piece that has to make thousands upon thousands of decisions every minute in order to keep that vehicle on the road safely. The more distractions that we have, the more challenges that we have to our ability to pay attention and those decisions that we make will inevitably cause us to have issues.  Cause the tools that we have within the car to exceed their limitations. And then we're gonna have an accident. Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. We would be remiss if we didn't mention distracted driving in any topic around driving.  Certainly, most important, when the weather conditions are poor. Just remember, the human brain can only make so many decisions in so many times, in so much time. And really, we're only doing one thing at a time. So that distraction that takes your eyes or your brain off the roadway, off the conditions, off the traffic simply allows again, Sir Isaac Newton to be in the driver's seat, taking you where he will and not where you necessarily want to go. So, you're just gonna set yourself up for those problems that you find yourself in a position where you can't do anything about it. You can no longer stop in time based on this amount of space that you have. And if road conditions are bad, you're going to need more space. So, the collision is almost inevitable based on where you found yourself. So, let's back that chain of events up, back to where we now have control and we'll leave that extra space in front of us so that we can avoid those situations completely. Peter Koch: Sure. Just consider back to that initial example that you gave, having the experience of missing your exit on the highway. So, I'm distracted to some point and I didn't pay attention to where I was on the road. I see the exit in the corner of my eye as I blow past it. My initial reaction is, oh, no. And I have a choice in that particular moment to take my foot off the accelerator and hit the brake or just keep going to the next exit and maintaining that speed and that driving distance. But that initial reaction is to be able to slow down. And if the weather conditions are challenging, if the road is wet, if it's raining, if it's snowing, if it's that there's ice or even if there's a buildup of winter sand on the side of the road, again, you don't have the traction. Randy Klatt: No, you don't. And keep in mind, the legal tread depth for a tire for almost every state, for most states is two thirty-seconds of an inch. Why the government can't reduce fractions?  I don't, I don't know.  It's a sixteenth of an inch. But, you know, two thirty-seconds of an inch of tread depth is legal. That's for D.O.T. as well. Steering tires four thirty-seconds of an inch. So, if we've got winter tires on our vehicle that are designed for snow that have the snowflake symbol with the Twin Peaks on it tells us that that tires supposed to perform 10 percent better than your other tires. That's a great safety feature.  But if the tread depth is worn down to six thirty-seconds, we have lost a huge percentage of our performance, more than 50 percent of our performance. So, it's a tire that is legal. It's six thirty-seconds tread depth as compared to the legal limit of two. But it's not nearly as well-performing as it was when it was newer. So, I see so many people that they go to their state inspection. The tires are close. Well, OK it passed, but you really should get new ones and they say, OK. And then they say, well, now I've got another year. WooHoo! Well, no, you don't. Those tires are not going to perform nearly as well. And true too of snow tires. So do the rotation like you should put the winter tires on at the time of season when you need them, but take them off when you don't, especially studded tires. Those really aren't doing you much good except on really hard packed snow and ice.  But for a lot of states, well, I think every state there are time limits where you have to have those off your vehicle. So be careful of those times and understand what the wear on those tires really are. And you may have to replace winter tires quicker than you might otherwise. Otherwise, you're losing the performance that you paid for. Peter Koch: Excellent. Randy. Those are that's a really good thought about having the proper really the proper shoes on your vehicle for the season. That's the type of thing you're not going to hike up a mountain someplace in sandals or you're not going to go to the opera in steel-toed boots. So, it's having the right tool for the job, for the right the right conditions. So, let's recap here and just kind of put together sort of those list of tips and things that folks can do to be better or safer drivers in the winter. And I'm going to start with the first one was going to be make sure your vehicle is properly maintained and understand its limitations. We've talked about a bunch of those things. So, understanding what has or how your vehicle will operate in the adverse conditions, what technology is in place for it to alert you to different challenges and how it's limited and make sure it's properly maintained. What else would you suggest for tips for our listeners to keep safe while winter driving? Randy Klatt: Well, again, fall back to the fundamental. If I don't have to go somewhere, I'm not going to go. So, let's wait an hour. Let's wait till later this afternoon, maybe even tomorrow if it's something I'm doing for pleasure or just a grocery store trip that I can I can get by. Let's do that. Let's let the snowplows get out there, do their job, clear the roads is certainly in states that see snow frequently within hours after the snow has stopped falling, you're gonna have pretty clear roads to use. So, let's do that first. Secondly, give yourself a little extra time. Slow down on the roadway. Let everybody else be in a hurry and risk themselves if that's gonna be the case, because you can't control that, but you are in control of your vehicle. Give yourself that extra space in front of you so that you have extra time to react and extra time for that vehicle to stop if that has to occur.  And overall, always understand your vehicle, the technology, what's going to help you, what's not. Make sure those tires are in good condition as they are the only thing that touches the road. Know how to use all the whiz bang features that you might have and understand ultimately that you are responsible. It's so easy to say the weather caused it. When I did crash investigation in the Navy for aircraft crashes, we could not use weather as a causal factor. It was prohibited by this, by the rules. Imagine that.  Pilot flies into a thunderstorm and a thunderstorm brings him down. Certainly, that's the weather's probably fault. And no, the answer is it was the pilot's fault for flying into it. So, use that overall guiding philosophy. You're in charge of that vehicle. You're responsible for your life. Anyone in your vehicle and all those people around you. Drive to save lives, time and money, despite the conditions around you and the actions of others.  Peter Koch: I think that's fantastic. Randy, those are all excellent points and I think our listeners will be able to take that with them as we come into this winter season.  So that about wraps up this week safety podcast. I appreciate everything that you've provided for us today, Randy, and all of our listeners out there who have followed us through this podcast. So today we've been speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region II Loss Control with MEMIC about winter driving safety. And if you have any questions for our guest or like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast. Email us at [email protected] Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/ Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch Randy Klatt - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/randy-klatt Sir Isaac Newton - https://www.biography.com/scientist/isaac-newton Hierarchy of Safety Controls - https://www.creativesafetysupply.com/glossary/hierarchy-of-controls/ ABS Systems - https://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-parts/brakes/brake-types/anti-lock-brake1.htm National Safety Council - https://www.nsc.org/ Mythbusters - https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) - https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/default.aspx 2015 Bangor, ME: I-95 Pile-Up - https://bangordailynews.com/2015/03/11/news/bangor/police-i-95-pileup-involved-more-than-100-vehicles-no-charges-expected/ Department of Transportation (DOT) - https://www.transportation.gov/