Fleet Safety! People talk about this, they think about only employees safety, but no it is more than that. Let’s know-how: When one of your fleet employees is at work, you are responsible for their safety. Besides, if your fleet is on the road, not only the safety of the employee but also the safety of the public is on your head.
The biggest goal of the Fleet Safety Program is to take care of the public, employees and members. As an organization or fleet manager, you will have to take appropriate steps to prevent their loss of life, injury or property.
As a fleet manager, you will face many challenges, one of them will also be fleet safety, employee safety, and public safety.
What do you mean by Fleet safety program?
Fleet safety program is a complete tour and training that is given to all fleet drivers that includes:
- Ensure a safe work environment for employees
- Protect against liability from vehicle accidents
- Prevent loss
- Public safety
- Increase the profit and decrease the loss
Importance of fleet safety program
If you do not adopt a fleet safety program, by doing so you can endanger the welfare of your employees and the company. So, you can build a better fleet by adopting a common safety program.
A good fleet safety program helps establish policies and procedures for you. This will ensure a safe working environment for your employees that occurs. In addition to this, it can also help protect against liability from vehicle accidents.
The road is one of the most dangerous places for your employees, although accidents are not completely unavoidable. Establishment of a formal and ongoing program of screening, testing, inspection and training is necessary.
What are the advantages of a fleet safety program?
While adopting a safety plan can bring you many benefits including improved safety, employee satisfaction, and the ability to improve fleet efficiency. It helps prevent and reduce accidents, which saves lives and money both.
It will also help you to get the right fleet compliances, fleet productivity, and more.
Safety Program metrics for your fleet
The fleet safety program should be up-to-date and instituted as a part of your company’s safety culture. It should be thorough, reaching each employee who gets behind the wheel. An effective fleet safety program should include the following metrics.
Training for drivers
Tell them all safety rules to ensure all drivers understand vehicle safety policies and procedures. Include training programs for task-specific vehicles. Require on-going and remedial training as necessary.
Driver Identification
You should know which drivers are using the fleet vehicle for their personal purpose and why. In addition, select which driver can use the company’s vehicles and the reason for using the vehicle.
Driver Behavior Analysis
Analyzing the behavior of the driver can give you many benefits because the driver’s poor attitude can lead to accidents and inefficiencies. First, track the driver route using the correct fleet technology and write down their performance data.
You need to monitor drivers’ speed, braking, location, equipment usage and other data to identify their behavior that needs improvement. If you find the driver’s behavior bad, change or dismiss a driver immediately.
Staff and Drivers Selection:
Select your driver and staff wisely, look at their complete qualification, criminal record, and work history. Besides, also check their traffic violation history, drug/alcohol violation history, Motor Vehicle Reports (MVRs), pre-employment drug testing and physical examinations.
This way you will be able to create a safe, and reliable team. And, get help from legal counsel to ensure your screening process is compliant with state background check laws.
Safety Policies for Fleet
Everyone should follow the fleet policies. A good policy will address all types of vehicle operators, including casual drivers. This program metrics will tell the drivers about distracted driving, personal vehicle use, safety restraints, and defensive driving.
Also, make sure that all policies elements should be reviewed and refreshed annually with guidance from your legal counsel.
Rules to Follow after an accident
Always define the accident response protocol in advanced so that drivers are already prepared to respond to and report accidents. In the safety program tell them this metric i.e. they should retain evidence, documents and communication during the events that follow an accident to help your business mitigate losses.
Fleet Maintenance
The safety of your fleet is your responsibility. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain your fleet vehicle. You should set the procedures for the inspection and repair of vehicles.
Regular maintenance will easily reduce the maintenance cost, unexpected breakdowns and prevent future accidents caused by faulty equipment.
Also, if you find that your vehicles are too old to drive on the road and require more maintenance every day. Then, the time has come to replace them and bring in new ones.
Plan their Roster
One of the best and effective metrics you should consider in your program is to plan their roster where arrival and departure time will be given to each driver.
While making the roster, keep in mind that the time of arrival and departure should be reasonable, so that every driver can follow it comfortably with no rush and hurry. Because if you will set a reasonable time on the roster then it can create inefficiencies.
Also, communicate with drivers to find the perfect balance that avoids scheduling conflicts and allows flexibility to deal with unforeseen events. This will improve safety and increase fleet visibility.
Stick to the rules with Management
Yes, if you want effective fleet management and want everyone to follow your rules. First of all, you should stick to the rules and wording with management. Hence, your leadership support will show that your company is serious about safety and everyone will follow them.
Set operating procedures
Outline all the standard operating procedures that every driver must follow. Include driver qualifications, licensing requirements, driver responsibilities and accident procedures.
At Manage Vehicle, we offer our customers effective safety programs that help protect what is important to their business. Get your fleet management software today!
We at Manage Vehicle combines all other solutions and allows businesses to improve their fleet’s safety and helps fleet managers to monitor and proactively improve the quality of their fleet and business.
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