Celebrate National Safety Month with Us! Week 2 Focus: Roadway Safety

It’s week 2 of National Safety Month, and we’re here to join the safety folks around the country in focusing on roadway safety. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of workplace death. During the second week of National Safety Month, we are focusing on how to stay safe behind the wheel.

Vehicle accidents are a leading workforce safety issue and the primary cause of work-related deaths in the U.S. More than 42,000 people die in crashes every year on U.S. roads. That comes to about 115 deaths every day, or nearly five deaths every hour. These incidents can result in fatalities, injuries, OSHA fines, and significant property damage. Implementing comprehensive safety protocols is essential for protecting both employees and customers.

Resources for improving roadway safety in your workforce

From Safety + Health: Do you have a fleet?

NSC has a great Roadway Risks Quiz

Or, check out Novara’s Safe Driving Training offerings.

For companies with fleets or employees frequently on the road, prioritizing roadway safety is essential.

It not only protects employees from one of the leading causes of workplace injuries and fatalities but also safeguards the company’s reputation and financial health. Effective roadway safety measures can reduce accidents, lower insurance costs, and promote a culture of safety. And demonstrating your commitment to roadway safety not only ensures compliance but also reflects a company’s dedication to employee welfare and social responsibility.

5 Ways EHS Managers Can Make the Most of National Safety Month

EHS managers who treat June as a strategic sprint — not a calendar obligation — will come out of it with better data, stronger habits, and a workforce that’s more engaged in safety. Here are five ways to make that happen.

1. Build a Toolbox Talk for Each Weekly Theme

The NSC gives you a roadmap: four distinct topics, one per week. Use it. Build a short toolbox talk for each theme and put it in front of your crew while the national conversation is already happening. Even easier, use one of the prebuilt toolbox talks available in Flex.

The key to making them land: match the topic to what your team is actually doing that week. As Novara EHS experts Taylor Thorn and Jill Schaefer put it, effective toolbox talks come down to “Convenience + Content = Effectiveness.” A great talk on fall protection means nothing to a crew that isn’t working at heights. Specificity is what separates a toolbox talk that gets remembered from one that gets nodded through.

Keep each talk under 10 minutes. Pull in photos from your own site — a hazard someone spotted, a setup done right, a close call from last month. Real images from your workplace are more credible and memorable than stock photos every time.

2. Share One Stat Per Week Internally

You don’t need a campaign. You need one compelling number.

Each week, pick a stat tied to that week’s theme and push it out — a team email, a Slack message, a bulletin board post, whatever reaches your people. Something like: a single forklift amputation incident can total more than $800,000 in combined direct costs, OSHA citations, and legal settlements. Or: workers retain just 12% of training delivered by lecture alone, versus 50% from hands-on working examples.

The goal isn’t to alarm people — it’s to give them a reason to pay attention. One number, once a week. It takes 20 minutes of prep for the whole month and keeps safety visible between formal touchpoints.

3. Run a “Good Catch” Recognition Program

Challenge your team to identify and report hazards they spotted and fixed before anything happened — a leaking valve, a blocked exit, a fraying cable. These are “good catches,” and they’re exactly the kind of data that prevents incidents.

Recognize submissions publicly. A shoutout in a morning meeting, a name on a leaderboard, a small prize at the end of the month — whatever fits your culture. The specifics matter less than the consistency.
What this builds: a reporting habit without the stigma that sometimes surrounds near-miss language. Workers who feel safe speaking up don’t just participate in June — they become your early warning system all year. Proactive reporting is, as one Novara expert put it, the true “measurement of safety culture health.”

4. Get One Leader to Deliver a Safety Message

Leadership visibility is the most powerful — and most underused — driver of safety culture. Not a policy memo. Not a forwarded newsletter. An actual moment where someone in authority shows they care.
Ask a site manager, VP, or ops leader to deliver a brief safety message during one of the four weeks. A two-minute stand-up address. A note to the team. A toolbox talk they personally lead. One visible moment like this does more for engagement than a month of posters.

“Watch me” is more powerful than “hear what I have to say.” When workers see leaders model safety — not just mandate it — the culture shifts. National Safety Month gives you a natural hook to make that ask.

5. Close the Month With a Culture Audit

Don’t let June end without capturing what you learned. Four weeks of heightened attention surface things that don’t show up in your OSHA 300 log — who’s engaged, where the friction points are, what your frontline workers actually think.

Do a brief pulse survey. Review the good catches that came in. Look at which toolbox talks generated the most questions. Talk to a few field leaders about what they’re seeing. Then use what you find to set Q3 priorities.