SafeCleanRide (SCR), a third-party certifier of sanitization standards for ground transportation, and Certified Safe Driver (CSD), a driver safety training provider, announced a strategic alliance earlier this month to combine best practices and standards for the ground transportation and fleet transportation sectors. The SCR program was also endorsed by the Greater California Livery Association.
“SCR and CSD are two businesses that desire the same outcome when it comes to safety. The pandemic has added more to the definition of health and safety,” said Andrew Ray, vice president and CFO of CSD. “Health is not now just proper diet, hydration, hygiene, exercise, and rest. It now brings the definition of hygiene to another level. Everything we come in contact with needs to be clean/sanitized. CSD is a hands-on company with defensive driving training for the transportation sector and independent contractors.”
SCR’s protocols were created and tested by transportation and technology veterans, under the watchful guidance of a panel of medical experts to ensure it is scientifically sound and in full alignment with CDC guidelines. Created with all of the educational and health goals of the CDC in mind, SCR has been fully reviewed and endorsed by an esteemed panel of experts in virology, chemistry, cleaning protocols, and transportation.
“CSD was formed by experts in ground logistics to provide required state and federal certifications for professional drivers,” said Sara Eastwood-Richardson, co-founder and media and marketing manager for SCR. “While CSD products and services ensure drivers are compliant with all state and federal laws, SCR ensures drivers are fully trained in CDC, OSHA, and EPA cleaning protocols. Our overarching goal is one—to mitigate risks associated with transportation so that drivers and the public are safer.”
The executive team with CSD brings decades of driving safety and logistics experience at United Parcel Service (UPS). Since its founding in 2016, CSD has worked with such major companies and agencies as Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, Nestle, Alto Systems, Los Angeles County of Public Works, SoCal Gas, and independent contractors for Amazon and Fed Ex.
“Our mutual best practices can help transportation operations promote safety and wellness to reduce at-risk behaviors, while reducing the exposure to the liability of a crash, injury or illness,” said Michael Perez, founder and CEO of CSD. “These measures instill safe habitual behaviors.”
Perez emphasizes a key word that applies to the CSD-SCR offerings: Exposure. “If you don’t do these things, you are exposed to liability. The more you do, the less liability. You want to have enough measures and practices in place so it can never be said you were negligent in your processes. As an organization, you are reducing your exposure by putting a safety process in place that includes foods, health, and hygiene.” Perez added, “Anyone who drives a vehicle for business or service needs this training.”
The value of the alliance between CSD-SCR will endure long after the pandemic is under control, as there will always be viruses, and this has become the new protocol for safety. Like wearing seatbelts, the combination of CSD defensive driving and SCR sanitary travel practices can reduce the costs of illnesses, accidents, and related liabilities, allowing transportation services and businesses to reallocate money and invest it in other parts of operations.
“We should be learning a valuable lesson from COVID,” Perez said. “We have seen fewer people hospitalized and dying from the regular flu. We have also started to develop some good habits that are keeping us from getting the colds we always get. Moving forward it should be that way.”
More than 20 million commercial drivers interface with millions of people in a day and are in constant motion, underscoring the wide potential for safer practices.
The industries served by CSD and SCR are amongst the highest risk for transportation of any kind and the easiest to potentially spread any health risk to our general public overall, notes Beatrice Solis, CSD’s senior VP of corporate development. “Although we may reach herd immunity, it does not mean there will not be a different type of health threat. These policies should become a lifestyle not just for work but in one’s personal life.”
Visit safecleanridecert.com or certifiedsafedriver.com for more information.
[02.22.21]