The types of roads driven, terrain, congestion and adverse weather conditions can significantly contribute to crashes. Drivers need to acknowledge these changing conditions and adjust their driving technique accordingly. Training and instruction may play an important part in increasing drivers’ awareness of these hazards.
Fatigue is a significant contributor of vehicle collisions. These often involve fatalities and serious injuries as the driver has significantly slower reactions and impaired observation skills, meaning that high speed impacts are more likely.
Fatigue may be caused by work and non-work related activities. The risk of fatigue increases dramatically with insufficient sleep. Driver alertness is also affected by job demand, repetition, diet, time of day, length of journey, health etc.
Vicarious Liability exposures include permitting or encouraging employees to use personal vehicles for business purposes or allowing family members to operate company vehicles. Without effective controls, the Company’s liability exposure is significantly increased, particularly in highly litigious societies. Providing a cash payment or mileage allowance to the employee does not relieve the Employer of liability.
The region which we normally drive in is familiar to us. When we drive in foreign regions however, these familiarities disappear, resulting in increased risks. These may include different languages, road rules, road infrastructure, road signage, even driving on the other side of the road.
The age of the fleet (and privately-owned vehicles used by employees for work-related journeys), as well as the replacement policy / period, influence the likelihood that the vehicle will suffer a malfunction as it gets older. This increases the risk of a collision occurring.
Older vehicles will not include many of the enhanced safety devices now available as standard. With constant technological improvements, even vehicles a few years old may not have the latest safety features.
Collision avoidance features are designed to reduce the likelihood of a vehicle collision, and injury to occupants.
Survivability features are designed to protect the vehicle occupants when a collision occurs.
When purchasing company vehicles, you need to consider both aspects to reduce vehicle damage and increase vehicle occupant safety.
Goods and samples carried in vehicles can pose a liability exposure if they are considered hazardous and a damage exposure if they are considered valuable to ‘would-be’ thieves.
Whilst hazardous goods and attractive items determine the exposure level, it is not until the procedures (if any) for stowage and securement are considered that the risk can be determined.
Routine inspection and maintenance of sedans/cars and light commercial vehicles is often overlooked, as employees regard these vehicles as tools of trade. The accumulation of miles and increased wear from everyday use can cause critical component failure not experienced with personal vehicles. Simple items, such as a non-functioning brake light, can cause major collisions. Conducting inspections only at regular maintenance intervals is inadequate. Maintenance should be triggered by driver inspections reports as well as routine cycles.
Experience comes with maturity. Driver maturity and health can directly affect driving ability, and directly contribute to collisions. Although statistics show young drivers incur more losses, in most cases medical impairments such as poor eyesight, hearing and cardiovascular health increase with age. Many of these may already exist as pre-existing ailments unknown to the individual. If employee health is not proactively addressed and monitored on an ongoing basis then these medical conditions may degenerate, and if undetected, can contribute to motor vehicle losses.
Home-based or remote employees who have infrequent physical contact with management are not subjected to the same level of supervision as workplace-based staff. This could increase the chance of poorer standards of vehicle care and maintenance. The lack of supervision can result in other conditions such as work-related stress, fatigue and isolation. Remote workers may be subject to additional safety related risks, particularly in the aftermath of a serious incident.
Driver turnover refers to the number of driver changes caused by inability to retain staff for whatever reason. Turnover amongst drivers increases exposure to collisions, through lack of familiarity with equipment, routes and job function. It also increases the cost of recruitment and training, as well as the more indirect costs of inefficient service to customers. One of the more common causes is remuneration, or payment. Therefore, ‘attractive’ pay and conditions for the job function is considered necessary.
The extent of control exercised in the employee recruitment process effectively determines the starting capabilities (i.e. how aware / skilled / trainable) for all new drivers.
If employee recruitment is neglected or poorly controlled, an undesirable influx of drivers with poor loss histories, low awareness levels and / or bad attitudes may creep into your organisation resulting in increased motor vehicle losses.
Protection for vehicles against fire, theft and vandalism when parked on premises is an important consideration as this is one of the rare instances where your motor fleet may be exposed to multiple vehicle losses (and hence major financial loss) in a single event.
Parking related losses (such as low speed manoeuvring, reversing and malicious damage) on and off workplace premises typically account for a large proportion of motor fleet losses. The contributing causes range from no safe guidance, unclear procedures, poorly designed parking facilities and driver negligence. Fleet operators should be aware that there are tools available to control these seemingly 'unavoidable' losses.
The loss history for a motor vehicle fleet is a good general indicator of the level of motor vehicle risk management, or good fortune, that an organisation has developed.
The rate or frequency of vehicle losses reflects the likelihood of the incidents occurring, and the average cost of these losses reflects the severity of these incidents.
Establish tracking / monitoring of motor fleet loss history at a management / organisational level (i.e. for individual business units as well as the total organisation). As a start, key performance indicators to monitor are;
For higher levels of tracking / monitoring all of these performance indicators should also consider kilometres / miles driven.
As with all other aspects of employee safety, fleet risk management systems, policies and procedures will help create a safe driving culture, as well as provide the basics for training, communication and accountability throughout the organisation. These systems, policies and procedures will require periodic review to remain current and effective.
Management expertise sets the tone for correct driver behaviours that reduce risk. Management must be accountable, have the expertise and resources, as well as a company structure of policies/procedures to establish a culture of safe operating expectations.
A robust quality assurance system tends to ensure continuity of these controls across all business units / operations.
Fleet Performance Management involves regular reviews of incidents involving work vehicles, and evaluating incident reduction measures. It incorporates a number of risk management techniques and procedures, ranging from loss reduction targets, incident investigations, analysis of incidents data and statistics, management of insurance, and specific driving related performance indicators. The Board should also be made 'intimately aware' of the fleet loss performance and actively promote incident prevention controls.
In order to adequately risk manage fatigue related hazards, fatigue monitoring and training programs need to address both ‘work related’ and ‘away from work’ fatigue issues.
The greater the fatigue exposure in your operations, the more comprehensive these fatigue controls should be..
Incidents (losses and near misses) are unique in that they provide us with real-life opportunities to learn from our mistakes. Hence, incident investigation is critical in identifying causes of incidents, developing corrective actions and preventing reoccurrence.
However, incident investigation will prove fruitless unless the data gathered via incident reporting is accurate.
Malicious damage and theft of vehicles or their contents can be expensive, time consuming and cause disruption to normal business activities.
It is therefore important for companies to have structured security management policies and procedures in place.
The use and abuse of banned substances (e.g. heroin, cocaine, amphetamines) and/or alcohol has a very serious, negative effect on the safe operation of vehicles and equipment. The use of some prescription or 'over the counter' medication can have similar results.
Failure to incorporate policy, education and monitoring for substance use / abuse into your risk management program will leave your motor fleet operations seriously exposed to the risk of human impairment.
We all assume that we can drive well, but it's a skill that is earned through experience. Unfortunately, bad habits may also develop in our driving skills. A small percentage of drivers are responsible for a large percentage of collisions. Most of these drivers exhibit poor driving behaviour long before the crashes occur.
It is important that companies ascertain the levels of hazard perception, behaviour and driving knowledge of their employees. If these levels are poor, and therefore a high risk, consideration should be given to defensive driver training, or specialised training for specific driving risks.
According to research, drivers who use mobile phones when driving, irrespective of hands-free devices, are up to four times more likely to be involved in a collision. Some studies have equated using a mobile phone to being twice over the legal drink drive limit.
In many countries, using a mobile phone ‘to your ear’ when driving is prohibited by law, but there have been cases where the police have prosecuted drivers when ‘hands-free’, by other road traffic legislation, citing ‘unsafe driving’ as the offence.
