From a article in North American Transportation

Lessons from The Godfather

In the late 1960’s novel, The Godfather, the thoughtful and calculating Don Corleone reflects on people who are easily angered. He muses, ―What kind of person jumps out his car after an auto accident and starts screaming and shouting? He goes on the speculate that such characters are courting death. The example is telling. Ironically, his son, Santino (Sonny), is prone to this impulsive, destructive instinct and demonstrates corresponding behaviors that we might today call character flaws. In the movie version (where there is a bias for action over psychology), these character defects lead to Sonny’s sensational death in the iconic tollbooth scene. The US government, specifically the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), discovered a lesson here for carriers and truck drivers alike. In their 2008 survey, they asked safety managers and transportation experts to identify and rank traits believed to be associated with crash risk. Their findings, based on a four-point scale, closely matched the Godfather’s theories: Personality Trait Safety Managers Other Experts Aggressive/Angry 3.4 3.4 Impatient/Impulsive 3.4 3.5 Inattentive 3.4 3.4 Inexperienced 3.2 3.2 Unhappy with job/Company 2.6 2.4 Hundreds of experts provided input and consistently agreed upon four of the top five characteristics likely to result in higher risk for vehicular crashes. Furthermore, the majority of the raters felt that the worst ten percent of drivers were responsible for 50 percent (or more) of a fleet’s crash risk. These are the outliers that everyone would like to remove from the driver pool. The issue is far from trivial. Truck drivers face a disproportionately higher risk for vehicular fatalities and for serious health disorders. The 2004 fatality rate for US heavy truck and tractor-trailer drivers was 48.2 per 100,000 workers, approximately 11 times the rate for the general population. In that year, the non-fatal rate was also the second highest of any occupation. It is no coincidence that CSA regulations target this high risk group, with the overtly declared goal of removing them from the highways. The survey results and statistical findings presented in the FMCSA report support the view that commercial drivers differ greatly in their levels of crash risk, and that a relatively small percentage of drivers (10-15 percent) account for a disproportionate percentage of total fleet risk (30-50 percent). Although no fan of governmental intervention, it is likely that Mr. Corleone would agree that CSA is well-intentioned. Safety pioneer H.W. Heinrich said much the same thing when he introduced his domino theory of accident causation in 1932 in his breakthrough paper, Industrial Accident Prevention. The first domino was based on worker personality, including traits like recklessness, stubbornness and greed. He demonstrated how specific behaviors, when repeated often enough, lead to accidents. In the past several years, many well-known business gurus have posited similar theories for achieving organizational success. Peter Drucker asserts that business success begins with getting the right people on the bus and making sure they’re in the right seat. Jack Welch introduced us to Top-Grading, a systematic methodology for continuously removing C players from the workforce. Both experts, and a veritable host of others, agree that the quality of any team or business is predominantly dependent upon the talent acquisition process. How is it then, that fleet managers have been so slow to embrace this approach to organizational improvement? Could it be the age-old perception of a driver shortage? Few industries today suffer from greater employee turnover than transportation. On one hand, this represents an enormous financial burden on fleet owners and on the other, it poses a remarkable opportunity. If winning begins with selecting and hiring winners, why is it that just about everyone is willing to settle for the first applicant who shows up with the minimum qualifications? Worse, why do recruiters seemingly ignore the most important traits during the hiring process and, instead, focus on qualities and characteristics that are rarely predictive of on-the-job success? In some cases, these are the very same experts who identified such traits as aggressive, angry, impatient, impulsive and inattentive as being most predictive of vehicular accidents. So what is an accident? An accident is an unplanned event that disrupts activity, affects people and has a cause. Almost without exception, that cause is a driver’s behavior. Thus, to make the highways safer either: 1) Correct the unsafe behaviors or 2) Eliminate drivers from the work force who are willing to behave in unsafe ways. But which strategy works best? Your mom was right. If you don’t want to get burned, quit playing with matches. And, if you want better results, quit hiring your own miscreants.