Fleet Safety improved in 5 steps

Improve your fleet safety

Having vehicles on the road all the time obviously comes with a higher risk of accidents, with approximately 1 in 3 road crashes involving a vehicle that is being driven for work purposes (Modern Driving Skills), with around 200 deaths and injuries a week occurring from someone driving for business purposes.

With this in mind, we have outlined 4 ways that businesses can improve their fleet vehicle safety, to reduce the rate of accidents. 

1. Train your employees driver behaviour

Implement a section about safe driving for work into your onboarding programme when a new employee begins with the company. If the employee isn’t aware of the company procedures with regards to driving, then it could be an accident waiting to happen.

Having a training programme and a vehicle fleet safety policy shows the professionalism of the business and the business caring about it’s employees well-being. 

2. Screen your employee’s driver performance

Ensure you have a strong screening process before your drivers take to the road in your often profiled vehicles. Do they have points on their license? Provide regular driving license checks improving fleet safety and reducing aggressive driving. 

3. Know your employees behind the steering wheel

It is all well and good having drivers out and about on the road, but do you actually know where they are driving to? How long they are going to be there for? The purpose of their trip? 

We understand that working days can be very busy and knowing the above information can be the last thing you think of. But make it the first thing you think of in the morning. If you have a vehicle tracking system installed into the vehicles, you will be able to locate where your drivers are and for how long they have been at that destination for. You will also be able to recognise whether vehicles are being used when they are not needed to, which in turn increases the risk of an accident happening.

If you don’t have a vehicle tracking system installed, why not? Find out the benefits of vehicle tracking here, such as reducing insurance premiums!

4. Give your employees a Driver Score

Monitor your driver performance and driver behaviour! With certain vehicle tracking systems, you will be able to monitor driver scores to see whether they are harsh braking, harsh accelerating or harsh cornering. 

You will be able to analyse the data in real time and penalise employees that are under a certain driver score. You could even bring in a league table, where it is a competition between your employees who has the best driver score, in order to encourage safe driving and reduce accidents, improving their driving behaviour.

5. Ensure Regular Vehicle Maintenance

Undertaking regular vehicle maintenance is important to ensure that not only the driver is safe but also that the vehicle that is being driven is fit for purpose. Irregular vehicle maintenance can in turn mean more vehicle downtime (Fleet News), which could have a bigger impact on the company in terms of profitability.