A survey by AAA and Nationwide Insurance shows that motor vehicle crashes impact nearly 40 percent of workers every year, causing each to miss an average of 5.3 hours of work.

This lost productivity is due to crashes involving employees, family members, or close friends.

Employers should focus on five key issues when educating employees about traffic safety — occupant protection, impaired driving, aggressive driving, sharing the road safely with trucks and other large vehicles, and driver distraction — according to the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety.

“Teaching employees to drive safely — both on and off the job — not only saves the organization money, it demonstrates that you care about their safety and well-being,” says Tom Walsh, former corporate health and safety director for United Parcel Service and chairman of NETS.

NETS is sponsoring the fourth annual Drive Safely Work Week, September 11-15, 2000. NETS offers a program tool kit focusing on a traffic safety theme for each day of the week. Visit the NETS web site at www.trafficsafety.org.

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