Keeping employees safe in the workplace is something most businesses do well through safety policies, but when team members spend most of their time on the road it can be hard to monitor and enforce these.
How do you ensure a company vehicle is as safe a workplace as an office or warehouse? And how can you know if your drivers are being safe on the road? We take a look at some of the solutions available.
Technology options
Technology can be a wonderful tool to improve business processes and streamline tasks.
In many cases, fleet managers are turning to technology to help them monitor drivers. Telematics – where data from the vehicle such as location, speed, braking and accelerating are collected by the business – has been widely adopted by fleets to identify risky behaviour to reduce the chance of an incident.
When data isn’t enough
Telematics data is incredibly useful but requires resources to review and address risky behaviour. And sometimes it can be hard to tell a story or review near misses simply by looking at numbers and graphs.
That’s why some fleet managers are adopting processes used by elite sporting teams to review the performance of drivers, including videos and commentary on ways to both anticipate and avoid incidents.
A good alternative or supplement to telematics are dashcams. They’re an always-on recording option inside and outside vehicles that are proving to be a popular way for fleet managers to easily monitor driver behaviour.
These can also be used in coaching conversations, where the recorded footage can provide real life examples of incidents and close calls.
Why drivers like them
When you ask people if they’re good drivers, you’re likely to get a positive response every time. It’s always the other person that causes the accident. Unfortunately, it can become a case of who has the best version of events.
Because of this uncertainty and possible fear of being blamed when they’re not at fault, dashcams have become a popular accessory for private motorists. This is great for fleets, because if staff already have them in their personal cars, they’ll be more likely to accept one in the work car.
Reducing costs
Dashcams have also been successful in driving down costs for fleets locally and internationally where fraudulent accident claims can cost businesses millions of dollars.
Some motorists see companies as easy targets with deep pockets. So, a minor incident may turn into a claim for thousands of dollars based on the report of the other driver.
Dashcams mean incidents can be reviewed and assessed based on actual footage, which can help determine the driver at fault and provide an accurate estimate of the damage to eliminate exorbitant false claims.
It’s also human nature to behave differently when you know you’re being watched. While you don’t want your staff to feel micromanaged, the simple presence of the dashcam is likely to change driver behaviour and lead to a more conservative driving style which, in turn increases safety, and reduces fuel consumption, maintenance costs and unauthorised use of the vehicle for private travel.
Dashcams make both safety and business sense, so they may prove to be a valuable addition to your fleets’ dashboards. Ultimately, dashcams can recoup their cost many times over and keep your team safer on the road.
