Fleet safety is one of the most important responsibilities a fleet manager has. Managing your fleet isn't an easy task. As the fleet manager's role has changed over the last decade, responsibilities have expanded. Fleet managers now need to consider factors such as fleet maintenance, 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?
Twenty 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 such as allocating realistic and safe shift times to employees will reduce the risk of driver fatigue.
Educating Staff will not only decrease the potential risks for your drivers but also benefit your business significantly. Your business's 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 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 overall utilisation using tools such as PoolCar to streamline and manage the utilisation of fleet assets.
Telematics can often assist in instances of theft by providing alerts and location information of stolen vehicles. This can be communicated to the police to improve the likelihood of recovery and reduce the insurance and other costs associated with stolen assets. Telematics data can also support your reasoning in a dispute over the cause of an accident.
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.
Smartrak's system combines with other solutions to generate comprehensive and long-lasting fleet safety improvements.
