The Top 5 Misconceptions of Fleet Tracking
8th May 2018
Could using digital forms revolutionise your fleet’s efficiency?
29th May 2018
No matter how large your fleet is, road safety should be at the front of every transport manager’s mind. Vehicle collisions don’t just result in increased vehicle down time. They can result in bodily injury or even death.
Road injuries and fatalities are on the rise in the UK, hitting a five year high last year. Higher levels of personal injury claims and increased vehicle repair costs can have a huge impact on our businesses. Ultimately, we all want to make sure that we send our drivers home safely and good fleet management has an important role to play. Here are some of the ways in which fleet tracking can improve road safety.
It lessens driver fatigue
Avoiding tiredness is a key factor in improving road safety. If you’re driving whilst overtired you’re more likely to make mistakes. Fleet tracking can help by ensuring that your driver is taking the best possible route and avoiding long delays in traffic jams. Fleet tracking gives you an exact vehicle location which can tell you if they’re heading for a traffic jam. You can then talk to your driver direct or upload an amended route to help them avoid getting stuck.
You can also use it to make sure that your drivers are taking proper rest breaks. Fleet tracking software can enable you to download live vehicle information whilst it’s still on the road.
It reduces stress
It’s not just tired drivers that make mistakes, stressed ones do as well. Research has shown that getting stressed behind the wheel leads to anger and an increased incidence of road rage. If your driver is stressed or angry about being delayed they could end up driving too fast or failing to consider the safety of other road users.
Fleet tracking can help them to avoid that.
It helps with speed management
Fleet tracking software won’t just tell you where a vehicle is, it can show you how fast it’s going. Speeding causes around 850 deaths and 33,000 injuries every year in the UK. That’s around half of all road deaths in a single year. That’s before you consider the potential impact of speeding fines, or having to replace a driver because they’ve lost their licence.
Having the ability to monitor a vehicle’s speed enables you to intervene whilst the driver is still on the road, or as soon as they return to the depot.
You can even intervene if it looks as if their driving has become erratic. It could be that there’s an issue on the road, or that your driver has become unwell. Fleet tracking can alert you and allow you to contact them direct to see if there’s a problem and get it resolved quickly.
Some companies are reluctant to use fleet tracking as it all feels a bit too much like ‘Big Brother’ is watching. We hope that we’ve helped to show you that it can have huge benefits for road safety too.
If you’d like more advice on how fleet management software could improve road safety in your business, get in touch!
