“I have a good understanding of the industry and how it has evolved over the years. From the basic technology to what we see now with the hybrids and electric cars. I have seen the vast advancements and changes that have come along over the years,”said Mr King, who moved into the top job after being the after-sales manager for parts.

Speaking about the transition to becoming general manager, Mr King said: “We [Mr Butler and himself] were very close and he supported me a lot. It was a smooth transition and it was a big learning curve for me.”

But it was only natural for him to take over as general manager.

“I have been at Bermuda Motors for 26 years,”said the 49-year-old. “I was after-sales parts manager before taking over as general manager. I first came to the company as a part-time worker out of Bermuda College. The opportunity was there and I took it. I was always interested in cars —it is one of my passions—and I was fascinated with Toyotas.”

Mr King said that when he was younger he saw that there were many guest workers in the car industry in Bermuda and not many Bermudians. “I saw the opportunity and that the future was mine if I wanted it. There were not many Bermudians in the industry then and I saw that many of the everyday things Bermudians could be doing were being done by guest workers.”

In fact he still sees the need for more Bermudians in the industry.

“It’s been a challenge for us to find Bermudians to go into the industry —I really don’t know why,” he said. “I can’t understand why we don’t have more Bermudians knocking on our doors. It is a challenge for me to get locals to want to come and work in various departments of the car industry. And everything is constantly changing now with the technology.

“We would like to get a commitment from Bermudians [to work in the industry]. We send people on courses constantly. In fact we just sent two people, one Bermudian and one guest worker, to the Kia training facility in Miami. Today you have to constantly keep up with the technology.”

It helps having been through the numerous departments at the company, said Mr King, adding that Kia is now their number one brand.

“I have been there and seen it and that helps —it is especially important moving forward,” he said. “We are constantly trying to improve and look after our customers so they get value for money. I have been in all the departments and know all sides of it. I have worked my way through them.”

And a car is especially important to Bermudians, he said.

“For the average Bermudian their car is their number one purchase because not everyone can afford a house. Their car is their first big purchase and we want to make sure we look after them all the way. Bermudians love their cars —they keep them very clean and take a lot of pride in them.”

Getting locals to buy into the new hybrid and electric cars will be a challenge, he said as some people don’t like change. “That is going to be a challenge for us —to get people to buy them and see the savings they will get.”

He has seen change over the years. “It used to be that all the cars were stick shift but that has changed. Nearly all of the cars we bring in now are automatics which are far better in our stop and start conditions. Now it will be hybrids and electric cars —we will be seeing more and more of them.

“That is just the way forward and with the price of fuel in Bermuda being so high is makes sense. Also with hybrids and electric cars it will reduce our (carbon) footprint. We live in this beautiful island in the Atlantic and we want to keep it that way.”

In the future drivers will see more electric stations and eco friendly vehicles.

Also the electric models are ideal for Bermuda. “We are not driving a lot of miles each day and it is perfect for us,” Mr King said. “You just plug the car in overnight —and depending how much you drive to work and back you won’t have to do that every night. Eco vehicles make sense for Bermuda in the future.”

Mr King has over the years gone on training courses to the Caribbean, Panama and also to Japan for Toyota. And it was while he was in Japan in the 1990s that he become aware of the philosophy of Kaizen —continuous improvement.

“The principle of Kaizen is you are constantly improving no matter if you are in manufacturing, supply or logistics,” he said. “It’s a philosophy. This business here is complex but you want to try and keep it as simple as possible. You are constantly asking yourself; ‘How we can improve our product and how can we can do things better’.”

Kaizen was originally introduced to the West by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Successin 1986. Today Kaizen is recognised worldwide as an important pillar of an organisation’s long-term competitive strategy. Kaizen is continuous improvement that is based on certain guiding principles:

•  Good processes bring good results.
• Go see for yourself to grasp the current situation.
•  Speak with data, manage by facts.
•  Take action to contain and correct root causes of problems.
• Work as a team.

“I took that on board and we work with it internally with our staff to constantly improve,”Mr King said, adding that working as the after-sales manager for parts was a “very detailed”job.

“There are thousands of parts and you can’t keep every single part [in store],” he said. “It was a very challenging job —how do we get a person’s part in that is cost effective and minimises the inconvenience for the customer.

“We have a wide range of vehicles —everything from the Picanto [the highest selling car in Bermuda] to the high-end BMW. We try and cater to customers with different budgets. Some are single, some have families and they all want something different —a car which suits their taste. We want to look after everyone.”

Bermuda Motors distributes BMW, Fiat, Ford, Kia, Lexus, Mini and Toyota cars, vans and trucks, as well as Kymco motorbikes and scooters.

Mr King himself drives a Kia, but his real love is fishing.

“I have a boat and I love fishing —especially deep sea fishing for wahoo and tuna,” he said. “I just love being out there. I have always loved being out on the water and I try to encourage teenagers to go out. Fishing kept me out of trouble when I was young and hopefully it can do the same with the kids today. I like to teach them about GPS and trawling —get them addicted to fishing!”

This article was featured in the May 2017, RG Motor Express Magazine, now RG Motor.

The post New boss at Bermuda Motors looks to the future appeared first on RG Magazines.

Describing the statistic of having more than four people a day injured as a result of road collisions in 2016 as “shocking”, Ali Bardgett, chairwoman of the Bermuda Road Safety Council, said: “According to the Bermuda Health Council’s 2011 Health in Reviewreport, the age-standardised rate of traffic fatalities per 100,000 population was 28.2 in Bermuda, compared to 9.2 in countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD),” she said.

“For males, the rate was 59.0 in Bermuda compared to 14.9 for OECD countries. The levels of injury are higher, and at huge cost both personally and for Bermuda’s infrastructure. With numbers like these, we cannot become desensitised — we need to be saddened enough to want to rectify the situation. This is everyone’s problem.”

Of that shocking statistic of having more than four people a day injured as a result of road collisions in 2016 Ms Bardgett said: “For such a small population, this is a shocking number, and disproportionate number of fatalities every year is even more concerning.

“According to a study by the former BRSC chairman, Dr Joseph Froncioni, in 2003 and 2004, for every one death there are over 200 injuries, 30 per cent are significant and require major hospitalisation and ongoing treatment. He refers to the ‘Iceberg Theory’ with the deaths being the tip of the iceberg and the vast number of injuries below the surface being mostly unseen by the general public.

“The cost to the island’s infrastructure is hard to estimate, but a new documentary titled A Piece of the Rockto raise awareness on the chronic issue of high incidences of road collisions and associated costs, they describe the situation as follows: “Over the ten year period from 2005 to 2014, there were 124 road related fatalities and over the five year period between 2009 and 2014, there were 11,246 road crashes [or 17 per cent of the population] that required emergency care at the Bermuda Hospital. The costs related to these road crashes were $17 million.”

Ms Bardgett said that 1,246 of those road crashes were categorised as “serious”, requiring the injured to spend on average eight days in hospital. “The additional costs related to the inpatient care for these serious crashes were an astronomical $20.4 million,” she said. “There are infrastructure and ancillary costs, as well as the expenses of the services that are called out when an accident occurs.”

Asked what the BRSC would like to see come about in 2017, she said: “The Minister of Transport tasked the BRSC to develop a Graduated Licensing Programme (GLP) for legislation and we have provided a draft proposal. The Ministry is also working on the introduction of speed cameras. The GLP is the foundation to improving road safety and speed cameras will help with enforcement.

“The GLP is for 16 to 18-year-olds and will be accredited by a recognised international standard. It will include on-road training with an instructor using helmets with a two-way radio and mic for constant communication whilst under instruction on the roads. We currently do not have any bike training on the road. Project Ride is confined to the car park at TCD and our 225km of paved roads now have over 47,000 vehicles for our newly licensed riders to navigate.

“We believe the lack of education of this standard is the result of the many of the problems we see daily on our roads. This comprehensive training, which has been standard for over 30 years in many other countries, will set the groundwork for changing riding behaviour.”

Drunk driving is also a major problem in Bermuda and Ms Bardgett said: “The culture of drinking and driving in Bermuda is still behind the times. We hear the argument that taxis aren’t available or we don’t have night buses. Our Junior Road Safety Council members tell us that it is normal for them to go to a party and throw their keys in to a bowl to be locked away if alcohol is present. They don’t let their friends have the keys to their bikes if they have been drinking. Sadly this thinking hasn’t reached everyone yet. Some of the older generations for example still think nothing to leaving a dinner party in their car after a few glasses of wine, beers or other alcoholic beverages.

“When the breathalyser came into force in the UK in 1967, the previous year had recorded the highest number of road fatalities at 7,985. Within two years a significant decline was achieved. By 1987, the government set the first national casualty reduction target. The target set was that road casualties should drop by one-third by the year 2000 in comparison to the average numbers for the years 1981 to 1985. The target was exceeded, with the number of fatalities dropping by 39 per cent and the number of serious injuries dropping by 45 per cent over that period.

“A huge cultural change was taking place through education and enforcement. Many of the local bars either closed or became gastropubs. The same happened when smoking was banned in public places. Thirty years on, nobody would dream of lighting up a cigarette in a bar or restaurant. Let’s hope it doesn’t take us another 30 years in Bermuda to tackle this problem and reduce the current, consistent rate of at least one road fatality per month.”

And during last year’s Throne Speech, Acting Governor Ginny Ferson revealed that roadside breath testing would be brought in this year.

To help stop the speeding on Bermuda’s roads, Ms Bardgett said that while they would like to see speed cameras installed, there were also other options, such as EVR (Electronic Vehicle Registration) systems.

“We already have the EVR sticker in our cars. This system was implemented in Bermuda by TCD in 2008. The technology has improved since then and probably is not as expensive now. EVR can be used with CCTV and automatic license plate recognition technology (ALPR). This technology has been around since the 1980s. Bangkok implemented this for speed detection two years ago via public and private partnerships (PPP or 3P). So far it has proven very successful, having a positive impact on the number of road deaths. This level of success is attributed to what experts agree is one of the most successful methods of ensuring safe driving; heightening the driving public’s perceived risk of apprehension by increasing the overall level of traffic surveillance. Using EVR in this way is less costly than increasing physical police presence, yet achieves the same goal.”

And the council would also like to see better training for tourists renting bikes. “The training should be tailored and offered to tourists including on-road training with a test required, for their own safety and that of other road users,” she said.

But to make Bermuda’s roads truly safe, she said that it was not just up to the Police, but also required a cultural change.

“We need targeted effort by all areas of responsibility, not just the Police using enforcement. It starts with education, personal responsibility and accountability, and enforcement. If you have never been taught how to ride a bike on a road and navigate traffic, it is a reasonable assumption that riders are going to copy what they see other riders doing — it is a self-perpetuating problem. We have to change the culture with this next generation being the change agents, leading the mission to save lives. We need to raise awareness of bad driving behaviour and the consequences of such bad behaviour that leads to the loss of life and severe injury.

This article was featured in the May 2017, RG Motor Express Magazine, now RG Motor.

The post Plea for people not to become ‘desensitised’ to number of accidents appeared first on RG Magazines.