The company car is considered by many, above all else, to be an employee benefit – a perk for both business and pleasure.
Inevitably, this mind-set has contributed to comparatively slower adoption of fleet management technology by managers of car fleets than by their counterparts operating vans and trucks. The latter are more readily viewed as professional business tools, with company car drivers traditionally feeling less comfortable with their whereabouts being tracked.
In truth, fleet management technology makes drivers’ lives easier. This includes cutting journey times and the stress caused by traffic congestion through improved navigation, simplifying the recording of business and private mileage, protecting them from working too many hours and mitigating the risk of accidents or speeding fines.
TomTom research has revealed that 36 per cent of car fleet managers currently monitor driver performance to assess risk, with less than a quarter of those (22 per cent) using technology to do so. In addition, 71 per cent of companies admit they don’t provide regular training for business car drivers. Download the report and best practice guide to discover the full extent of the findings.
Fleet management technology can play a vital role in ensuring driver safety, and with a third of all road traffic accidents believed to be work-related there’s an increasing need for risk to be effectively managed. Whether employees are driving company or privately owned grey fleet vehicles, employers should pay the same heed to work-related road safety as they do to their general health and safety policies. Indeed, they are legally obliged to do so.
Encouragingly, 81 per cent of those questioned in TomTom’s latest study do include work-related road safety as part of their company’s health and safety policy. Forty-three per cent however fail to conduct regular risk assessments across their vehicle fleets, 40 per cent do not have systems or procedures in place to manage driver fatigue and almost a third (32 per cent) admit they are not fully aware of their exact requirements for managing road risk.
By fulfilling their duty of care obligations, companies can help protect their business reputations and also help to stem the tide of rising fleet insurance premiums. This becomes all the more compelling in light of two-fifths of UK companies claiming to have suffered from rising premiums in the past 12 months.
Fleet management technology with advanced driver behaviour monitoring tools can hold the key – empowering drivers to effect change and boost safety standards by improving their driving style and performance behind the wheel.
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4 thoughts on “Business car insight: Is enough being done to ensure the safety of car drivers?”
In this day and age of computers, video links etc why is there any need for the business user to have a car? Such a vehicle is a perk that many employees are not able to have and given the way many are driven, one hand on the wheel coffee cup in the other whilst a third operates the tablet/laptop, they are now beyond a joke.
Every morning I when not using the tube travel into work by car, and almost every new car is a business user, phone all but strapped to their ears, demanding to be let across from the far outside land to the nearside so as they can exit. They use the far outside lane as a personal race track until they need to dive off to Godalming or Kew.
If fleet managers are watching what is going on they are NOT doing a very good job of it. Perhaps a black tracking box in the car would see an improvement in business driver behaviour
Thanks for the point of view, we agree you can’t manage what you can’t measure so a fleet management system would certainly help fleets see where the problems are.
Having driven ‘company cars’ while working as an IT engineer for many years, I can safely say most companies care little about the safety of their staff.
They do care about meeting ‘response times’ and other contractual issues.
They don’t care about health, tiredness, road conditions, weather etc.
Usually fleet managers ‘just supply vehicles’ after that field staff just get on with the calls.
Managers just look at the queue of calls and care little about how the field staff are coping. In one period of several months I was the only one working (3 sick) out of a team of four.
Did I hear from management “did I hell”.
I requested some driver training for the team but it was refused as it “costs money”.
The service department of a company is “EXPENSIVE” to run so money will not be spent on anything that slows down the calls!
We can’t comment on the individual policy of companies, but what we can say is that in our experience the companies that really use fleet management to empower drivers and improve operations so they are safe and efficient are always more successful. After all a happy and safe workforce is a productive one!