FEWER company car drivers to blame for accidents in 2014 was the good news in new figures from Lex Autolease, the UK’s largest fleet provider – but road accidents still cost businesses more than £25m in insurance excesses.

Analysis of Lex Autolease’s accident management fleet of 173,600 vehicles shows that the bill for excess insurance payments because of accidents involving company drivers came in at only slightly less than the previous year – when the figure topped £26m.

That’s despite a 5% fall in the number of accidents involving company cars overall, down from 44,448 in 2013 to 42,097 last year.

• Company car drivers responsible for fewer accidents

There was a notable improvement in company car driver behaviour, demonstrated by the reduced number of accidents in which company car drivers were at fault – just over a third of all accidents (34%) during 2014.

This is a significant reduction of 15% on the previous year, when figures showed company drivers were responsible for nearly half (49%) of the overall total.

There was a similar reduction in the frequency of accidents involving company cars colliding with a third party with nearly 8,500 accidents in 2014, down from almost 11,000 in 2013.

• Careless collisions with stationary objects

However, the figures also reveal a lack of care from some company drivers as over 7,000 accidents involved hitting an immobile object, such as colliding with a fence while manoeuvring. This is almost a fifth (17%) of the total, and significantly up from 10% in 2013.

The cost to businesses of such collisions was £5.4 million – almost a quarter of the total bill for accidents overall.

• Number of third party at-fault accidents on the rise

While driver safety levels appear to have improved amongst company drivers, the same cannot be said for other motorists. There was a marked increase between 2013 and 2014 in the proportion of accidents where the third party was to blame.

More than half of all damage accidents (52%) involving company cars were due to third parties. Notably, more than 3,000 company cars had a third party crash into the back of them, and almost 4,700 vehicles were hit by a third party while parked. This was up from 47% in the previous year.

Richard Harper, head of accident services at Lex Autolease, said: “There is much for businesses and drivers to take heart from in these latest figures. It is reassuring to see that the number of accidents overall has dropped, especially when the accident management fleet as a whole has grown.

“The decrease in accidents where company car drivers are at fault, too, shows that businesses are making significant progress when it comes to educating employees about road safety.

“However, we have seen only a negligible reduction in the cost of accidents year on year, and it is alarming that £5.4 million was paid for avoidable collisions with stationary objects. When additional costs such as repairs, replacement vehicles, third party damage and personal injury liabilities are factored in, the final accident bill is likely to be considerably higher.

“It is crucial that companies put in place procedures to understand why these sorts of accidents occur and how they can take steps to avoid them.”

What more can be done to reduce business drivers’ accident risks?

Take a look at these Business Car Manager  stories:

• Read how Volvo helps SMEs cut road risks of most dangerous month,
• Not just paperwork – Transport Research Laboratory’s ‘Crash’ course helps managers deal with accidents,
• Too fast? A £100 ticket is just the start – see the implications in Speeding: High costs of breaking the law,
• White-out? Common sense and legal musts in Five facts to drive safely in fog, and
• Technology advances – learn about the New Euro NCAP test to rate pedestrians’ life-savers