All It Takes is Five Steps
There are a lot of costs associated with running a business—especially if that business is equipped with a fleet of vehicles. Aside from fuel and maintenance costs, fleet managers also have insurance costs—an expense that can significantly add up if an employer is involved in an accident. That being said, a major area of concern for fleet managers is driver behavior.
In a recent Automotive Fleet article entitled, “Steps to Reducing Preventable Accidents,” there are five basic steps to reduce preventable accidents:
- Collect motor vehicle reports on all job applicants and existing fleet drivers to prevent the hiring of problem drivers and help identify high-risk drivers who require extra attention, such as remedial training.
- Keep current files on driver behavior, and include as many data points as possible. In addition to motor vehicle violations, include accident history, traffic camera violations and public driver re-porting data.
- Set up a system where every driving event is equally applied to a driver’s risk summary, anywhere it happens. Create a formula for identifying different risk levels based on each driver’s cumulative performance.
- Make it easy for drivers and their managers to know the risks they present to fleet, what can make increase or decrease risk and what the consequences are.
- Take action for poor driving as soon as possible after drivers pass into a higher risk level, and reward drivers for good driving performance.
With actionable data about drivers’ speeds and locations, fleet managers can improve their fleet’s safety, reducing the risk of an accident and lowering the cost of insurance.
While these steps are all beneficial, there is another step fleet managers can take to help prevent accidents and that’s GPS fleet tracking. A fleet tracking solution enables fleet managers to proactively monitor their employees for unsafe driving habits. For example, if a driver is speeding or driving aggressively, fleet managers can set up alerts to be notified the minute a driver exceeds the speed limit.
