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This week is Road Safety Week, placing duty of care issues under the spotlight. But are business drivers being looked after all year-round, and if so, are they taking on board the company message?
Duty of care, health and safety, corporate responsibility. All are now as much a part of the language of running a fleet of business cars as leasing, maintenance and residual value. Managers are more aware than ever before of the need to take care of their staff while they're out of sight, driving on work business.
"The duty of care message has really started to drop this year; in the past it was an education process," said Elliott Woodhead, director of consulting at top ten lease firm Arval. "Most fleet managers now understand and they want to do things about it. There's now a genuine desire to help drivers and make fleets safer."
Woodhead reckons that historically, some industries were quicker than others to recognise a company's responsibility to its drivers. Sectors used to dealing with health and safety in non-driving-related areas, such as construction, were quick to embrace a driver's need for protection, while the more white-collar firms sometimes took longer because the concept of duty of care was new to them.
There are several levels of effort companies put into meeting their safety obligations, and while some do the bare minimum, others work significantly harder.
"The very basic thing companies are doing is to have a fleet policy and driver handbook, which is as old as the hills," said Woodhead. "But good companies do a lot more than that, things like licence checking or driver health checks. And something that's starting to become more widespread is journey planning."
The benefits of formal journey planning include - apart from the basic congestion avoidance and allowing enough time to safely complete the trip - being able to monitor the distances workers are being asked to drive in a day, and ensuring that rest breaks every two hours are factored in. "It's a big one, and people are starting to adopt it," said Woodhead, who also advised that plans should be evaluated by fleet managers, both to update prospective routes, and to ensure drivers are compiling suitable plans in the first place.
Arval's director of consulting says, however, that the best driver safety policies can't be entirely "top-down", with line managers in particular having a key role in making sure they work. "They can reinforce, encourage and see where people are going wrong," said Woodhead, who also pointed to correct management of accidents to learn from real-life examples of things going wrong. "It's not just a case of saying, 'here's your new car, off you go' - companies need to understand why it happened."
Even if companies are making all these efforts, can they really be sure their drivers are actually listening, rather than making all the right noises and then continuing in the old vein? "Complacency is very dangerous - there are things that could and should be done," said Tom O'Conner, chief executive of Digicore.
"There's no hard and fast rule. Some companies get the message across very effectively and their drivers do toe the line," said Steve Johnson of driver training firm Drive & Survive. "Business drivers do the most mileage pro-rata, and they're a pretty safe group."
But there are still ways to keep a watchful eye on your drivers and influence their behaviour. "Some companies are using a big stick to get compliance. They're saying that unless drivers obey it'll be a HR disciplinary matter," said Johnson. "We wouldn't advocate that. We'd rather a carrot than a stick, but it may be the ultimate sanction."
He instead uses the example of companies that offer incentives to drivers that avoid speeding fines and accidents, return the car in good condition and perform well in company carpark spot-checks that even check whether the car's been washed. "It actively encourages people to look after their vehicles and act responsibly."
Additionally, Woodhead's Arval advocates logical driver profiling, saying it is relatively easy to practice. Online driver assessment is the first part, and it can be combined with any number of pieces of evidence, such as looking at endorsement points, accident record and a driver's fuel economy to give an individual driver profile. "With good companies, drivers that fit a certain profile will be given extra training," said Woodhead.
Obviously, as well as the drivers, it's just as important that the vehicles are safe. A survey of vehicles about to undertake Drive & Survive driver training found a massive 16% of the firm's training sessions were aborted due to the driver's company car having at least one illegal tyre, with another 4.6% aborted due to lighting defects and 1.6% ended due to worries over a vehicle's brakes.
"You must remember that this is just a snapshot of those who have done on road training with us," said Drive & Survive's Johnson. "One would hope that these drivers are from companies who are aware of their duty of care and health and safety obligations.
"However, a lot of organisations are doing nothing about reducing occupational road risk," he continued. "Based on our findings, if 16% of all fleet vehicles in the UK are running around with illegal tyres, we are talking about some 480,000 vehicles that might not be able to stop effectively, especially in the wet."
Looking ahead, the next step in driver safety could be a complete outlawing of mobile phone use on the move. "The argument against it used to be that a salesman needs to be there for the customer, but clients are getting increasingly sensitive to it," said Woodhead.
Steve Johnson also points to the latest Department for Transport, stats that show the biggest cause of accidents is driver inattention. 'Failed to look properly' was the UK's most frequently reported factor, occurring in almost one-third of accidents.
Although the total dropped by 1% in 2005, there were still 3201 people killed on British roads last year. Five of the six most frequently-reported contributing factors were related to a driver error or reaction, while loss of control was the reason behind 35% of fatal accidents. Speeding and driving too fast for the conditions contributed to 15% of collisions, although the percentage increased in line with accident severity as it was a contributing factor in 26% of fatal accidents.
The statistics illustrate exactly why it's so important that your workers are driving safely, and have been given all available training and assessment.
Beyond the detective work, incentivising or plain threatening employees into shape, there are other things businesses can do to ensure their drivers behave as they should. Digicore boss Tom O'Conner argues that there's a place for tracking systems. "Clearly, vehicle tracking and technology has a role to play. It's not the be all and end all, but it's got to be part of a risk management approach." As well as allowing managers to remotely monitor a vehicle's speed and route, the systems can sound an audible warning if the driver passes a set velocity, check drivers are taking the correct breaks, and plot whether the driver is taking the easiest route.
"Where a vehicle is a working tool, you're looking at the costs for both the vehicle itself and the people in it. If it's not working efficiently and safety then it's a waste of a double asset," said O'Conner. "Black boxes can help a manager - it's like having one of the management team driving with everyone."
However, any installation of black-box tracking technology needs to be delicately handled. "It's a normal reaction to fear change, and telematics is a huge change to the company and to the individual that will have the system fitted in their vehicle," said O'Conner. The good telematics companies also manage the system's introduction, rather than fitting it and walking away, which is what creates the mood of mistrust these monitoring devices predictably cause. "We do it through consultation. People are anticipating 'big brother' when it's not actually the case," explained O'Connor.
Metasystems' business manager Kevin Lynch agrees that telematics is taking on a more varied role. "More and more companies are becoming aware, and that's reflected in telematics and what it's used for in the last couple of years," he said. "A lot of companies just rely on a driver's manual; they hand it over and think that's enough. But if there's a problem, the repercussions can go all the way up to the director."
Some, though, are more sceptical about the benefits of tracking technology. "Telematics doesn't work purely for duty of care. It's great for a delivery fleet but I wouldn't propose it purely on duty of care grounds. It's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut," said Arval's Woodhead.
A hidden benefit of tracking is the ability to tell if a vehicle hasn't moved for a few weeks for one reason or another. "It's especially important at this time of year," said O'Conner.
The key to managing the risks your drivers face out in the field every day is to remember that there's always something more that can be done. Taking care of your workers isn't a one-off project, setting up a policy and leaving it to run itself. The process of education and reinforcement combined with an effective way of monitoring driver performance, whether it be through technology or keeping an eye on licences, fuel economy and accident records, could make the difference in both financial and human terms.
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