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How to Prevent Fleet Accidents

22 October 2018

​If you’ve ever been in a road accident, you’ll know what emotional distress the incident causes to fleet drivers and managers alike. Year on year, every day sees more than 150 vehicles driven on company business involved in an accident across Britain. Modern technology is moving on at a phenomenal pace, with much discussed about self-driving cars and vans. This can be a daunting time for fleet managers. Before we end up worshipping R2-D2 and his fellow robot friends, we’ve compiled a few tips on how to best aid your human drivers to avoid accidents on the road.

The number one priority for fleet managers is to give adequate training and a safety policy. Keeping on top of this reinforces the priorities for fleet drivers, allowing clear and concise rules to be established. These ground rules should cover phone use, company safety training, and behind-the-wheel training. A fundamental element of any safety policy is to encourage education and instilling drivers on the merits of defensive driving.

Utilising telematics data can be a helpful tool to aid drivers’ navigation on long journeys. We’ve often seen lorry drivers get lost on a journey and attempt to go under a width-restricted tunnel. As humorous as this may be for viewers and by-passers, seeing one of your staff members in that scenario would not be a pretty sight. Sat Navs can be installed in fleet vehicles to increase the efficiency of the driver, while keeping overall safety as a top priority. Telematics can be a useful tool to detect whether vehicle tyres are in need of replacing, as they keep on top of the general wear and tear. As a fleet manager, this is also a crucial tool in managing drivers’ output and performance while on business. These systems can monitor distracted driving, speeding, dangerous manoeuvres, hard braking and excessive acceleration.

An additional idea to manage fleet driver behaviour is to limit the speed on each vehicle registered. Doing this allows you to minimalize the risk of speeding tickets and excessive costs to your business. To keep in line with your policy, managing the speed limit of each vehicle can be an incentive for drivers to follow the company values. In short, the crucial aspect of preventing accidents is down to a good, consistent management strategy for all drivers in your fleet. Stay safe out there!

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