The Importance of a Pre-Trip Inspection
Planning a safe trip as a professional truck driver requires thoughtful preparation before every journey. These are key practices to keep in mind throughout each stage of your trip.
Coaching Corner:
Predicting Crash Involvement
By Mike Hitchcock, Lead ICSA Safety Consultant
Have you ever wished you could see into the future? What would you do or change? How would you manage your business if you could predict the future? If you knew the odds of being involved in a crash, what would you change? If you operate a small fleet, how would you use that information to select your drivers?
Here are some interesting facts from American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) for you to consider. Even if you are a single truck operator, knowing these facts and changing your driving behavior can reduce your odds of being in a crash. ATRI created a crash predictor using data from thousands of truck-involved crashes and this is what they found:
Source: https://truckingresearch.org/2022/10/predicting-truck-crash-involvement-2022-update/
Violations ranging from failing to obey a traffic warning light to following too closely predict the chances of being involved in a future crash. In comparing this study to several others, the five behaviors highlighted in the chart above have consistently been strong indicators of future crash involvement.
As a business owner, you reduce your odds of having crashes by carefully considering these violations when reviewing prospective drivers’ records. If current drivers have a past history of such violations, you can help change the future for them with remedial training that starts with sharing this data with them.
Lastly, ICSA offers great safety training courses on our website https://safecarriers.org behind your member login. From our Model Safety Plan to FirstGear Online Driver Training, these safety courses are available to members at no cost.
(Editor’s NOTE: We are sorry to announce that Mike will be retiring from ICSA effective October 1, 2023. As our lead safety consultant, Mike has been the linchpin of our member safety programs and the overseer of our SmartDrive event recorders and TADTS drug testing requirements. He will contract back to ICSA for a few hours per week and will continue to author Coaching Corner for us. Best of everything, Mike!)
Welcome to 2026! Here is What to Expect From the Feds
English-language proficiency, non-domiciled truck driver licensing, enforcement of cabotage rules, thorough commercial driver’s license (CDL) training… actions in all of these areas made trucking headlines in the first year of the Trump Administration.
Marijuana Rescheduling: What it Means for Trucking
On December 18, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order directing the federal government to conduct rulemaking to move marijuana from a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to Schedule III.