February 1, 2018

The importance of fleet safety

Fleet safety is amongst the most important responsibilities of a fleet manager. Managing your fleet isn't an easy task. As fleet manager's roles have evolved over the last decade, their roles and responsibilities have expanded. Fleet managers now need to consider factors such as fleet maintenance, fleet safety, productivity levels and be mindful of their moral and legal obligation to keep staff members safe as they perform their daily tasks. Accidents and incidents can happen at any time. Do you know where your employees are, and what their situation is?

Fleet Safety can be improved by addressing the following areas:

  • Educating staff on managing fatigue at work
  • Educating Staff on the importance of good driver behaviour
  •  Introducing a telematics system to your business
  •  Introducing gamification to the workplace

Educating staff on managing fatigue

20 percent of fatal road accidents and 30 percent of severe single vehicle accidents in rural areas involve fatigued drivers. These statistics show the importance of fatigue being discussed and managed in the workplace. Preventative actions including allocating realistic and safe shift times to employees, to reduce the risk of driver fatigue.

Educating staff on the importance of good driver behaviour

Educating Staff will not only decrease the potential risks for your drivers but also benefit your business significantly. Your business' reputation will be protected by minimising negative driver behaviours when operating company branded vehicles, fuel costs can decrease by up to 7.4 percent, and maintenance costs on your fleet will be minimised as well.

Introducing a telematics system to your business

Introducing telematics to your business can have significant benefits. These benefits include tracking vehicle data such as real-time speeds, braking, acceleration, and idle time to provide a basis for managing and improving driver behaviour. Fleet utilisation in many organisations is often just over 50 percent. Telematics can help identify underutilised assets, and improve the overall utilisation using tools such as Pool Booking streamline and manage the utilisation of fleet assets.

Telematics can often assist with insurance and theft, through data to justify your reasoning in case of a dispute if an accident has occurred (Yarra Valley case study) and provide alerts and location information of stolen vehicles, which can be communicated to the police to improve the likelihood of recovery and reduce the opportunity costs associated with stolen assets.

Gamifying Management

Leveraging practices such as gamification is an effective method to improve overall fleet safety. Gamification taps into the competitive spirit of employees to encourage self-improvement. Studies show that there is an 84 percent decrease in driver accidents and over 50 percent improvement in driver safety after gamification is introduced to the workplace.

Smartraks EyeQ system combines with their other solutions allows businesses to improve their fleet's safety.  EyeQ allows fleet managers to monitor and proactively improve the quality of their fleet and business.

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