Pro-Active Versus Reactive Fleet Safety Management

Switching your company’s road safety strategy to one that is pro-active as opposed to reactive is easy, cost-efficient and potentially life saving.  Here’s how….

Value it:

Elevate your approach to safety as a core company value. By promoting fleet safety as an intrinsic part of the company’s make-up, you will be in a position to make a real difference not only to the culture of your own business, but also to your supply chain and the wider industry.

Own It:

Manage risk across the whole journey of your vehicles, safety should and absolutely must extend beyond the yard/site.

Draw up your policies and procedures, with clear boundaries and responsibilities, and up-to-date record keeping.

Get involved in every incident involving a vehicle to review the investigation, communicate lessons learnt and use this to focus improvements.

Work it:

Work with your insurers, become a CLOCS champion; understand not only your own incidents but those across the industry, in order to assist formulating best practice and reducing incidents within your own fleet.

Improve it:

Decide on the right technology for your fleet to support your safety ethos, and support it with driver training covering work related road risk, use of in-cab technologies and vulnerable road users. It’s a common question – which comes first, policy or technology? Well, it always helps to have some fleet safety policies in place prior to purchase, creating policy will at the very least inform your buying decisions. But with the addition of technology, your policy, procedures and driver training will inevitably be influenced and so with this in mind, your procedures should be evolved and updated post-introduction of technology. Examples of such additions include:

• Regular checks to ensure equipment and devices are maintained and fully operational at all times
• Steps and training introduced to ensure that drivers recognise the use and activation of the devices as an integral part of their job
• Additional tech fitted to the vehicle should be included in driver’s daily checks

Yield it:

You give out good, you will get good back. Exercise a disciplined, proactive attitude to workplace safety culture and you will have hauliers and employed drivers feeling better protected and better informed. You will see a reduction in blameworthy road incidents. You will see fewer claims and payouts, which could mean a decrease in your insurance premiums.   You will win contracts on the back of your safety standards. You will spread the fleet safety culture further along in your industry. You can make a real, palpable difference.