Fleet safety recommendations

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Ah, January, 2004!  Another year to look forward too.  Anyone who believes that safety is static and never changes if fooling themselves.  There are some excellent best practices to bench mark against.  As I consult for a number of trucking companies and companies that have sales staff or employees who must use a vehicle  here are some cutting edge solutions to some common problems encountered by Safety personnel who have to manage fleet safety.

80% of your problems are caused by 20% of your Drivers!  That’s right…the most costly accidents, collisions, and property damage are caused by only 20% of your drivers…so what do you do?  You target them in your Health and Safety initiatives.

Develop a risk profile for each and every driver.  This should include the number of moving violations and accidents each driver has experienced  and you should go back a minimum of two years and review their records.  You will establish what specific incidents you will track and assign points based on the severity of the infraction.  For example, if a driver is speeding 10 km over the speed limit you would assign fewer points than if it was 30 km over the speed limit.

Based on the measurement standards you establish, customized to the most significant problems you encounter as a company, you prioritize each and every driver into categories.  For example:  Category 1 is low risk and would have different intervention measures than Category 2 which is medium risk and Category 3 which are your high risk, high incident causing drivers.

For Category 1 drivers, they are good drivers so you would work on maintenance activities. You would provide ongoing training to make sure they remain good drivers.  Some of the training would be topical like a recent accidents which impacts the fleet as a whole and they should be informed about it to prevent them from having the same type of accident and seasonal like winter driving information.  You can use CD’s, videos,  training sessions to accomplish this. They should be tested on the information to ensure that they have achieved and maintained an acceptable standard.

For Category 2 drivers the medium risk drivers, you would couple the training session with actual hands-on sessions to intervene with the problem or target areas you have identified.  Training in Driver Improvement courses, safe backing are some of the areas you can intervene in.  You would use your internal driver training staff for these types of activities and test to ensure that they have obtained a higher level of driving skill.

For Category 3 drivers your high risk drivers you would have a more aggressive approach: they would spend at least a day, one on one with your driver trainer, working on the specific  problem areas you have identified in their risk profile sheet.  It would be customized to their specific problems and you would emphasize how serious the company is about improving their Health and Safety record.  You may wish to use consultants who specialize in improving “at risk” driver behaviour rather than your own internal training staff to really improve their skills. Categorizing drivers into risk profiles means that you will allocate your resources in a tight, targeted fashion specific to your driver’s pertinent issues. 

Of course, you should also examine your new hire orientation as this area represents your new drivers who statistically suffer from the highest risk of accidents in the first 18 months of the job.  Why shouldn’t they?  They  suffer higher stress as they learn their equipment, their job, and the expectations of your company.  You can minimize their stess by showing that Health and Safety is on the same level as your  Corporate policies, and that their management must undergo the same process.  All staff must be orientated to the Company’s Corporate and Health and Safety policies, undergo a ride along with a driver trainer that pinpoints their strengths and opportunities for improvement and be tested on the orientation material.

So often management affects fleet safety because they set the tone for your operations, if they are poor drivers and overschedule their drivers, fleet safety will be not be a priority and will suffer.  However, if they are trained and  emphasis is placed on improving their poor habits and senior management ensures this occurs: fleet safety will improve and the drivers will know that their company is not paying lip service towards Health and Safety.

Management, once trained, should schedule ride alongs with a random sample of your  drivers at least once a year to ensure they remain in touch with your workers and emphasize the  importance of good driver behaviour at your company.  They should inform the drivers about the importance of the ridealong and make observations discreetly ( i.e. not take notes during the drive) and provide specific, concrete feedback to your drivers.

To maintain momentum all drivers and managers should participate in some form of driver safety training every three years. Options include hands on training, CD-ROMs, manuals, online programs, videos/ workbook program.  This process will ensure that you demonstrate commitment to reducing incidents and accidents and improve your bottom line and allocate your fleet safety resources in the most effective and efficient manner. Safe driving during the rest of 2004!WSN