Partner Article

Empowering drivers to stay safe on the roads

The latest Global Status Report on Road Safety states that more than 3,000 people worldwide are killed every day in road crashes, with 1.24 million annual deaths and 50 million serious injuries.

Vehicles driven for work purposes clock up the highest mileage on Britain’s roads and Roadsafe, a leading forum for promoting solutions to road safety problems, recently reported that almost nine in ten vehicle fleets (86%) have experienced an accident in the past twelve months.

Organisations operating large vehicle fleets have a duty of care to ensure that they provide their drivers with the equipment and conditions they need to operate safely and efficiently. They must therefore look to prioritise driver safety and leverage the tools and technologies available to mitigate driver risk and promote a safe driving culture.

Leveraging technology to manage driver behaviour

Traditional in-vehicle driver safety solutions have proven successful in helping fleet and field service organisations to monitor and manage driver behaviour, to directly reduce accident rates, cut vehicle downtime, prevent loss in productivity due to road incidences and, as a result, maintain brand image through safer driving.

According to FleetSafe, a leading fleet forum for promoting road safety, excessive speeding is the single biggest cause of deaths on roads and report that just a 5 per cent reduction in the average speed can reduce the number of fatal crashes by as much as 3 per cent. Fleet managers can address excessive speeding, as well as other aggressive manoeuvres, with an in-vehicle driver safety solution.

Once deployed, real time alerts are offered to the driver as well as being sent to the back office for analysis. With this data at hand, drivers can instantly change their driving style and recommendations on training can be made for individual drivers, resulting in lower accidents and liability therefore helping to manage the risks associated with work-related driving.

Fostering true business intelligence through extended capabilities

Many organisations are extending the capabilities of their driver safety solutions even further today through the use of performance management analytics tools. These tools are capable of consolidating driver data across a large workforce to provide fleet managers with advanced business intelligence. Reporting and performance reports can be generated that specifically spot trends and manage by exception. For example, a report can detail the driver scores of a workforce, over a week to a month, to show who has experienced the biggest change to their driving over that period and why. If one driver shows trends in braking too sharply, turning corners too aggressively or using gears inefficiently, this will be highlighted in the report. The information can then be passed on to the management team to arrange driver training, tailored to the needs of individuals so that they can improve on their weakest areas.

Trimble’s performance management analytics capability helped Indesit UK, a leading European manufacturer and distributor of major domestic appliances to identify areas for driver improvement from the information it was gathering from its fleet. A trend of excessive vehicle idling as well as drivers recording high RPM rates, due to the use of inefficient gears, was recorded. Once drivers were informed of their most needed improvement areas and trained on how to achieve them, Indesit realised a development in overall fleet performance. Vehicle idling reduced, RPM rates dropped and an increase in more efficient driving across the fleet, indicated by improved Driver Safety scores, was realised.

Mobility solutions a major influence on driver safety

Identifying drivers who may need coaching on safer driving is only half the battle to running a safe and efficient fleet 24/7. Drivers need to have constant benchmarking and advice on how they can improve and many organisations seek a more sustained approach than just one-off training. Technology is available today that provides drivers with a tool to keep road safety front of mind on each and every journey, no matter what vehicle they may be using.

The development of bespoke mobile apps for monitoring driver performance is fast making a big impact on the fleet and field service industry. The technology offers drivers themselves the ability to monitor their driving behaviour by getting data from the vehicle sent to their smartphone. Such an app will pick up on key ‘events’ such as braking, acceleration, speeding and turning and will judge the manoeuvre as being acceptable, moderate or hard. For the driver, having the intelligence of how they are performing at their fingertips greatly increases their road awareness and empowers them to make immediate improvements to be a better, safer driver. For the business, it can benefit from mitigated risk, a reduction in accidents and boast a safer workforce out on the road.

Drivers are also able to view their safety score and compare it against the average for the rest of their team. For example, information can be based on a rolling week and will show the score for the previous 7-day period. To help foster further improvements, businesses can use this information to incentivise their best performing drivers and provide training for those that are struggling to improve their safety scores.

It is very important that companies and individual drivers take responsibility for their fleet safety and using carrot rather than stick methods to incentivise the driver into driving safely will certainly help with this in the long term. Ultimately, when comparing the cost of a training or incentive scheme with the associated costs of accidents, there is no contest. Any reward for or recognition of individuals all helps to promote a safe driving culture across the organisation.

For a complimentary copy of 10 Steps to Optimising Driver Safety, click here http://ow.ly/MwQPa Or for more information on how Trimble can help you to protect your drivers on the go, visit our Driver Safety Information Centre, here http://ow.ly/MwR1S

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Cameron .