Fleet safety is critical for your drivers’ safety and minimizing fleet costs while maximizing efficiency. Prioritizing fleet safety isn’t just one step; it is an involved process that incorporates all aspects of fleet management. Creating a fleet safety program is essential in implementing fleet safety into your business. This is a series of procedures and guidelines for fleet safety practices that your fleet will follow to stay safe on the roads. Creating a fleet safety program is difficult, but let this article serve as a best practices guide for a fleet safety program.
The Key Elements of a Fleet Safety Program
When creating your safety program, you must consider elements that will ensure your fleet is both safe and effective. These elements are different for every fleet, but every fleet business can generally apply four specific elements.
- Safety Policies: Your policies should address personal use of vehicles, distracted driving, defensive driving, and other safety issues. Remember to keep these policies up to date and review them regularly.
- Maintenance Needs: You should employ a fleet maintenance checklist for all your fleet vehicles and adhere strictly to it, checking your vehicles each time you start your route.
- Driver Identification: Fleet managers must always know who is driving what vehicle. Knowing who is authorized to drive each vehicle and for what purpose is a critical part of fleet tracking that often slips by many fleet managers.
- Screening Process: Fleet managers must run thorough background checks on their drivers, including criminal history checks, traffic violation checks, drug and alcohol violations, and Motor Vehicle Reports (MVRs).
Tools You’ll Need for a Fleet Safety Program
Tools and technology improve every day and serve as excellent aids in your safety goals. Investing in the right tools is critical in creating your fleet safety program. These are just some of the tools that may be useful for your fleet’s program.
- Telematics: You can use telematics to spot dangerous driving habits like speeding, harsh braking, rapid acceleration, and similar behaviors. Even better, you can set up alerts to determine when these behaviors occur so you can take corrective action immediately and prevent potential accidents.
- Route Optimization: Route optimization gives drivers confidence in where they’re going. It can also eliminate dangers like left turns and U-turns.
- Geofencing: If your drivers behave unexpectedly, you’ll be the first to know. It also prevents the theft of vehicles and increases the chances of finding them if stolen.
The Steps in Creating a Fleet Safety Program
There are four steps in creating a fleet safety program that you will need to follow. Our article, “How to Build a Fleet Safety Program,” breaks these down in more detail, but we will summarize them here.
- Create an Outline: It may help to organize your outline into bullet points. Some bullets that might be beneficial to include might be:
- Training
- Motor Vehicle Records (MVRs)
- Communication
- Rewards Programs
- Accident Review
- Telematics
- Obtain Proper Approvals: Present the outline to the proper authorities to get approvals for your fleet safety program. First, present it to your immediate supervisor, then up the chain. Ensure you get approval in the form of a hard copy memo or e-mail.
- Expand on the Program: Flesh out the details of the outline. These details include how it will be announced and implemented. These factors should be communicated clearly to the team to ensure they understand what is expected and can perform to the best of their abilities.
- Implement the Program: You can formally announce your new program via e-mail, the fleet website, or any other method you choose. You just need to ensure that it is easily accessible to all employees.
Support Your Fleet Safety Program with the Best Technology
If your fleet wants to create a safety program that will go the distance, Azuga has everything you need to help you on your journey. From dashcams to maintenance alerts to fleet tracking, you can accomplish anything with us by your side. Meet with one of our experts for a demo and see what we can do as a team.
