4 Tips to Improve Fleet Safety 

From cell phones, to radio, vehicle passengers, to billboards… distracted drivers and distracted driving behaviors are all around us. Although cell phone use is often the primary culprit to driving incidents, distracted driving is more than just texting and driving. It can be any combination of visual, physical, and cognitive behaviors. According to the NHTSA, distracted driving claimed 3,142 lives in 2019. 

And the perceived ability to multitask contributes to many distracted driving incidents, especially with millennials (age groups 25-34). In 2020, 29.8% of millennials reported they multitask moderately well, while 20.3% of the respondents in that age group claim they multitask extremely well.  That’s a combined 50.1 % of millennials who are confident in their ability to multitask while driving!

Not only does distracted driving affect the persons involved in the incident, it has a heavy impact on fleet operations. Employers spend nearly $60 billion annually on work-related accidents. Along with the financial implications, fleets involved with distracted driving incidents are subject to angry customers, supply chain delays, increased insurance costs, and costly litigation. 

4 Tips to improve fleet safety by detecting, alerting, and minimizing distracted driving behaviors. 

Company Culture – Promote safe work and driving environments. 

Promoting a safe work and driving environment is imperative when minimizing accidents and dangerous driving behaviors – and it all starts at the top. Company culture is a hot buzz word/phrase for many growing companies. Culture and organizational safety within transportation is vital to maintaining daily operations, as well as, retaining drivers. With every aspect of a fleet’s safety record available within the FMCSA government database and a shortage of CDL licensed drivers, it is now more important than ever to promote and reward consistent safe driving and operational practices within your fleet. A smart driver will definitely do their due diligence before joining a new company to ensure the company has a clean and safe driving record. Everyone wants to be on a winning team.

Practice What you Preach – Implement policies to protect drivers 

All talk and no action won’t do you any good when it comes to workplace and driver safety. Action without clearly defined and communicated expectations is even less effective. If creating a safe company culture and work environment is step number 1, then step number 2 is consistently implementing and communicating safety policies and procedures. You can’t expect your drivers and employees to practice safe behaviors if they don’t know what those behaviors are! Incorporating your driver safety policies into driver training and orientation is a great place to plant the seeds of your safety policies. Cell phone use, in-cab trip communication, and pre-trip checklists, are all key areas to include in a driver safety policy.  It is important to impress upon drivers that these safety policies are to protect the drivers just as much as they are to protect the fleet and company as a whole. And, as the successful fleets know well, achieving strong profits are impossible without a safe fleet made up of highly trained professional drivers.

Leverage Fleet Management Technology – Driver scorecards 

Once you have your policies defined and communicated to your drivers, it is acceptable and warranted to reward and hold your drivers accountable based on their driver behavior and performance. With advanced in-cab technology and superb backend fleet management solutions, fleet owners and administrators have the ability to monitor driving behavior through My20’s integrated Live Supply Chain™ dashboard. With the implementation of driver scorecards, fleets can identify problem areas within specific driving behaviors, such as habitual speeding, and provide additional training and resources to correct the issue before it’s too late.  In 2019, the most frequent driver violation during an inspection was speeding 6-10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit. In-cab telematics in conjunction with robust driver scorecard reporting, provide the visibility into speeding, hard braking, rapid acceleration and more. 

Driver scorecards are not only beneficial in the prevention of dangerous driving behaviors, they can also provide a great incentive program for your fleet. Driver bonuses and reward programs are a great way to retain happy drivers and reduce driver churn by recognizing those with great safety records. 

Introduce Video Management System – Fleet Dashcams 

The best way to bring fleet safety policies and procedures together is through a video management system. The My20 LogiCam AI-powered dashcam provides fleets Live Supply Chain™ video telemetry in order to monitor and enforce safe driver behavior. The tamper resistant camera has a 1080P HD adjustable 140° wide angle road facing camera along with a 720P HD adjustable wide angle driver facing camera to assist in detecting distracted drivers. Detecting and alerting the driver provides the driver with immediate feedback of an issue and will give the managers and admins the ability to educate and train drivers on continued potentially dangerous driving behaviors in real-time. 

Improving and maintaining a clean fleet safety report is extremely beneficial for fleets. Creating a company safety culture, implementing well-defined policies, leveraging technology, and implementing dashcams can all help provide a safe and healthy work environment for your employees and drivers.

For more information on dashcams and fleet safety contact us today!