As Mark McKenna, of Bluedrop Services discusses, all employers have a duty of care to their employees and other road users to ensure their company driver’s conduct is of the highest standard. Whilst your drivers may all have current and clean licences you cannot assume that they need no further training. Most drivers would benefit from continued training to help reduce fuel consumption, vehicle wear and tear, service and repair costs and ensure safety on the road.

A recent study from the Institute of Advances Motorists’ (IAM) Drive & Survive Division highlights the overall need for driver training programmes. Fleet professionals from 100 businesses were surveyed and highlights from the report conclude that:

• 86% of fleets have experienced an accident in the past 12 months
• 100% of fleets have had an accident where one of their drivers was ‘at fault’.
• 14% of fleets had not had any vehicle incidents in their fleet in the last 12 months
• Every fleet had suffered on-road incidents that were caused by their driver
• Nearly half of all fleets said the average cost of repair per vehicle was over £1,000
• Only 33% of fleets said at-fault drivers faced some sort of punitive measure (i.e. fine)
• 51% didn’t offer any post-incident driver training to reduce the risk of repeat incidents

In another earlier study from IAM in 2014 showed that as many as 72% of people who drove for business reasons had been offered no training by their employer at all – even though 44% of them said they would welcome the opportunity. Attitudes to driver training have shifted over the years and more people are now open to the idea of focussing on safety and take the introduction of training programmes less personally.

Benefits from introducing driver training

In general trained drivers will adopt improved driver behaviour and reduce tensions on the road, with measured reductions in road rage and resulting incidents. Your employees are ambassadors for your brand who represent you on the road as well as in front of customers so it is important that they are projecting a positive image at all times.

In terms of business retention your employees will likely show more loyalty from continued investment in them as well as helping to set you apart from your competitors. Financially, many driver training providers also quote a reduction of up to 15% in fuel costs as a result of driver training and believe that defensive drivers are 20% less likely to be involved in a collision, not to mention the savings in maintenance and repair. Hard acceleration, idling, inconsistent speeds, excess use of air conditioning, and hard braking are all bad driver habits that can be corrected with driver training and/or education.

But road safety goes beyond the financial benefits and by applying focus in this area employees will understand that your company takes the matter seriously and adopt increased awareness in their driver behaviour.

Classroom or in-vehicle?

Safety education teaches drivers the importance of taking safety seriously, and teaches the techniques of defensive driving. The education of driver training can be conducted in a classroom or online. E-learning is particularly useful for geographically dispersed workforces. Potential topics can include journey management, driver risk and minimising future risk or teaching the approved actions following a road incident.

Safety training, on the other hand, puts a driver behind the wheel and applies the education and how to react in an emergency. This can be done on the road or indeed in some form of driver simulator. It focusses more on how much pressure to apply to a brake pedal, how to deal with different conditions, and testing driver reactions in an emergency. Simulators are ideal for training in different types of weather or terrain as well as some providing virtual traffic with intelligence to react to the user’s driving behaviour.

Many companies of course will not have the internal resources to offer such training in-house and therefore have to turn to external providers for their training needs. There are many providers available and it is important to remember to keep records of your progress. Telematics data to highlight improvements as well as records on fuel usage and speeding points, etc which can all help to highlight the advantages of driver training to management as well as to achieve reductions in your fleet insurance premiums.

Written by Mark McKenna

Mark is a commercial insurance specialist. Starting work in the insurance profession in 1985 he has over 30 years’ experience in all areas of commercial insurance. As National Sales Manager for Bluedrop Services. Mark currently specialises in Motor Fleet Insurance and offers advice and support to customers in this area.