Purdue’s Transportation Safety Policy Earns an 'A'

Purdue University’s Risk Management Department was at a crossroads. It could continue on the road it was traveling, which allowed most employees and students to sign out a motor vehicle whenever they wanted one. It could select a more arduous route, severely restricting use of university cars and vans. Or it could find a middle course that accommodated drivers’ needs and advanced key transportation safety principles.

The department chose that middle path. After two years of work involving a committee composed of key stakeholders, the university implemented a new vehicle use policy. Because the committee obtained broad input and ironed out minor issues in advance, implementation was “almost shockingly smooth,” said Dann VanHoosier, a Purdue risk management loss prevention analyst.

Previously, Purdue, which has about 19,000 employees and nearly 39,000 students in and around West Lafayette, Ind., had minimal vehicle use rules, VanHoosier said. For example, drivers’ motor vehicle report (MVR) checks were not required.

“We wanted [a policy] that above all was practical and as easy to implement as possible,” said Mark Kebert, the university’s risk manager. The policy had to encompass faculty, staff, students and volunteers.

Rolling Up Their Sleeves

The university manages a variety of vehicles, some located in a central pool and others owned by various departments. A thorough understanding of best practices at other institutions, past individual driving habits at Purdue, future needs, and accident claims was essential to determining the best approach.

Kebert and his staff reviewed transportation policies in use at more than a dozen universities. Then, they “got a lot of information from the deans of the different colleges” and others at Purdue, Kebert said. Because Purdue is an agricultural school with students doing field research, students must be able to use university vehicles.

These reviews and discussions led to a debate about the minimum age for drivers. The committee settled on age 18 for automobiles and 20 for passenger vans, which also require at least two years of licensed driving experience and completion of van training annually.

When they examined claims, one incident stood out. A school van heading to a sporting event slid off an icy road, and one person died. “We used that incident to drive home to executive management that we really needed to have a policy,” Kebert said.

Managing Critical Details

Purdue faced cost restraints in developing and implementing policy. For example, “Running MVRs on 19,000 employees every year could be outrageously expensive and cumbersome,” Kebert said. Accordingly, the policy calls for MVR reviews of students and volunteers who ask to operate a vehicle owned or leased by the university and establishes that school officials may perform MVR checks at any time on employees using university vehicles.

Employees who get driving citations that shift their university driving status from acceptable to unacceptable are placed in a “conditional” status and required to take training to help them return to acceptable status, VanHoosier said.

“The employee has a limited time period in which to complete the training,” Kebert said. “If they miss the time period, we receive notification that training was not completed or completed in an unsatisfactory manner."

Kebert and VanHoosier’s goals include minimizing accidents, and their financial impact and damage to the university’s reputation. “We have a claims management system, and we run reports on vehicle incidents,” Kebert said. “We’re constantly monitoring which direction we’re heading on those claims.… We’re always looking at: Could this have been prevented? What could we have done differently?” For example, they’ve added training for backing vehicles and driving larger trucks.

By Steve Bates, a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C., area.