Navigating in-vehicle phone use: Balancing safety and technology

I’ve just finished a meeting with the ABC Home & Commercial Services of Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) Safety Council, where we reviewed footage from an in-vehicle camera. The employee in question was flagged for looking at their phone, which was in a holder, while driving to follow directions to their destination.

In these formal meetings, we discuss each incident to decide whether to dismiss it as minor or to have the person’s manager discuss it with them and possibly take disciplinary action. We vowed long ago that at our company, bad drivers cannot have a job that involves getting behind the wheel.

Key takeaways

• Zero tolerance for bad driving: ABC Home & Commercial Services maintains a strict policy that being a safe driver is a prerequisite for employment.
• Technology is a double-edged sword: While modern GPS is safer than old-school paper maps, it still requires visual attention that can cross the line into distracted driving.
• The “trusted advisor” standard: Safety isn’t just about compliance; it’s about a moral obligation to ensure every team member returns home to their family.
• Proactive review: Using in-vehicle cameras allows for lively, formal reviews to determine if driver behavior is genuinely dangerous or a necessary part of navigation.

How technology has evolved

I very much remember the early days of beginning my business in the DFW Metroplex. In those days, the maps were literally spiral books with each page being divided into smaller squares. You might have to navigate from page 32, square M, to a totally different page — sometimes even switching between Dallas and Fort Worth atlases while driving.

In today’s world, you can put the destination into your phone or vehicle’s map system and follow those directions turn-by-turn. Still, it’s not a perfect system, as you regularly need to look at the screen to make sure you do not miss an exit or turn.

Currently, we are using driver safety review meetings to decide whether the actions shown on camera crossed the line into dangerous behavior. Each time, it is a judgment call, one that not everyone immediately agrees on.

The best practices for navigation

In my vehicle, I have a large screen on the dashboard that mirrors my phone. This does a great job of making sure I do not need to touch my phone while driving. If I have the sound turned up, it will even give turn-by-turn directions audibly.

However, even this technology cannot eliminate the need to look at the screen. My personal protocol is as follows:

1. Look after every turn to see when the next turn is coming.
2. Count landmarks like stop signs, traffic lights and intersections.
3. Focus on the road, using the screen only for quick confirmation so eyes remain off the device as much as possible.

Unfortunately, not many vehicles in our fleet currently have those larger screens and mirroring capabilities, though I hope they do in time.

A matter of life and death

Beyond navigation, phones should not be used in our vehicles while the vehicle is in motion. Texting while driving is rampant today and it is a horrible habit that is hard to break. Having cameras in our company vehicles that face forward and backward, combined with a well-written and enforceable policy, helps significantly.

I have said this for many years during my “driving speech” with each driver before they are issued a vehicle:

“The last thing I ever want to do is to be sitting at a funeral with a grieving spouse and say, ‘I knew they were a bad driver, but we just needed them to get their job done, so we didn’t do anything about their driving behavior.’”

Being in the pest control industry is not just about taking care of customers; it is also about taking care of the people we work with — and their families. A large part of that is keeping your eyes solely on the road and driving safely.

Jenkins is president of ABC Home & Commercial Services, Dallas, Texas. He can be reached at djenkins@abcpest.com.