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Crunch time for crashes: 5 ways to improve your company driver safety

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8 March 2014

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A third of all crashes involve an ‘at-work’ driver. That’s serious in itself, but the statistic also represents a huge cost burden for small businesses

ROAD crashes happen all too often but most are avoidable and unnecessary. 

Over 95% of all crashes are due to driver error, and many of these are attributable to driver behaviour. And a third of all road crashes involve an ‘at-work driver’. 

Behind these figures is a never ending spiral of associated costs, increased insurance premiums, lost production, and employee and vehicle downtime. All are eroding your bottom line.

But there is a lighter side to all this! Reverse the downward spiral, and not only will you see fewer accidents, but all those associated – and to some extent hidden – costs will come down too. The question is, how?

 

What can be done?

We all know that driving is a life skill and for many people it’s the most dangerous thing they do on a daily basis.

But familiarity breeds contempt, so the everyday risk of at work driving is rapidly discounted.

As the boss of an SME it’s your pocket that ultimately suffers so you need to both minimise the risk, and make safety a bigger priority for your staff. You need a safety culture within the organisation.  It takes someone at senior management level to implement simple, cost effective yet noticeable changes in the way a company operates and views safety.   

You should also ensure you are compliant with all the relevant legislation – rather a lot unfortunately. It looks daunting to begin with, but creating a ‘corporate in-house safety culture’ can offer benefits to SMEs too.

 

Making your small fleet safer

1. Risk assessment

The first step is to keep up with current HSE, Audit Trails, Duty of Care and Corporate Manslaughter laws by having your drivers assessed for risk. 

Due to the substantial costs of ‘traditional’ on-road driver assessments or training, you could tackle this using online assessments and completing some e-elearning modules. 

Is there a downside to this?  Yes without doubt as I have always felt that drivers can be ‘economical with the truth’ and ‘wing’ their way through such online assessments but it is a great deal better than nothing, and of course it’s much cheaper than on-road assessment.

 

 

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Matt Morton

Matt Morton

Matt Morton is an automotive content writer for Business Car Manager

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