Road fatalities are comparatively rare in the Republic of Ireland yet some of the country's drivers appear to be determined to make the situation worse, if the results of a recent survey carried out by AA Motor Insurance are anything to go by.
Of the 16,300-plus motorists it polled no less than 71% said they witnessed other drivers driving too fast every day, while 32% admitted to speeding themselves.
35% of males quizzed admitted to driving at excessive speeds frequently compared with 30% of women.
In a separate survey, again involving over 16,000 motorists, almost 80% stated that at least once a day they witnessed somebody using a hand-held mobile phone while driving. Interestingly, however, less than 17% confessed to doing it themselves: perhaps uncomfortably aware that if they are caught by the Gardai (police) they face two penalty points on their licence and a fine of up to €90.
Speeding and allowing yourselves to be distracted by using a phone while at the wheel means that the risk you will have an accident – potentially a severe one – increases dramatically. ‘You’re four times more likely to crash if you’re on the phone,’ points out AA director of consumer affairs, Conor Faughnan.
Worryingly for Irish fleet managers, at least some of those drivers breaching the law are bound to be driving on business.
It is not of course a situation that is unique to Ireland, and it is one that fleets can address through training, incentives for improved performance, clear policy guidelines on what the company expects from its drivers and a variety of other measures.
However the lead must come from the top and too often it does not, contends Spencer McDonald. He is president of Surrey, British Columbia, Canada-based fleet driver training company The Thinking Driver.
‘Frequently we see lip service paid to driver safety with strong statements of corporate commitment by senior management but an absence of meaningful action,’ he observes. ‘Senior executives are visibly absent from training courses and have a belief that they are somehow exempt from safety policies such as the inspection of vehicles (checking tyres, lights and so on) prior to any trip.
‘By contrast, enlightened organisations implement driver safety programmes by ensuring that top managers attend courses and obtain any qualifications involved early on in the process,’ McDonald continues. ‘These managers lead by example by not only committing to training but adhering to policies such as the prohibition of the use of cell phones while driving.
‘Workers not only need to hear from management about safety,’ he insists. ‘They need to see management complying with the rules too.’
So what are those rules? Although they may be laid down in words of one syllable by a trainer, even the most diligent employees may find it difficult to remember everything that has been imparted to them after a few weeks have gone by.
The answer, says McDonald is to set them out clearly in a separate section of the company’s health and safety manual. ‘And the consequences for non-compliance should be stated clearly,’ he adds.
One of the best ways of improving the general standard of driving in a fleet is at the recruitment stage.
‘Check the driving records of all prospective employees who will be driving for work purposes and screen out applicants who have poor driving records since they are the ones who are most likely to cause problems in the future,’ he advises. ‘Furthermore, the individual’s driving record should be reviewed annually and action should be taken if that record deteriorates.’
Such action could include remedial training. ‘If a fleet driver does have a preventable accident then the incident should be reported and investigated, the root causes identified and an action plan should be drawn up to help prevent it from happening again,’ McDonald says. If for example drivers have repeated low-speed reversing accidents in one of the company's own depots then it could be the case that the lay-out of the depot needs changing and the lighting needs improving.
Carrots are as important as sticks, with the best-performing drivers – those who can boast a zero-accident record over, say, 12 months – receiving recognition, possibly including cash bonuses.
One challenge fleets face, says McDonald, is that many drivers, including those with clean driving records, have undergone no driver training whatsoever since they passed their driving test. That may have been many years ago and the test may not have been all that demanding.
David Bradley, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, a trade association, says: ‘The joke in Ontario used to be that a guy could show up for his heavy truck test in a pick-up with a fifth wheel on it pulling a horse trailer.
‘That loophole has been closed, but because testing is a provincial responsibility there are all sorts of other anomalies around the country.’
‘To set a baseline for driver performance and to document competence in case of future problems, employees should be trained, evaluated and qualified on the vehicle type or types they will be assigned to in the environment that they will be operating in,’ contends McDonald. ‘Regular refresher training should be conducted with an on-road re-evaluation every two to three years.’
On-line training also has a role to play, as Nestlé New Zealand has discovered. It has worked with Auckland fleet risk management specialist SurePlan to develop a risk management strategy that has delivered a 38% fall in the number of incidents experienced by participating drivers.
It was launched with a series of classroom-based driver education workshops that were followed up by an e-learning driver training programme.
‘It has a far greater focus on driver behaviour than the traditional style of driver training does, which often has a greater focus on the driver’s skill,’ says SurePlan. ’Statistics show that the majority of fleet crashes are due to poor time management, a lapse in concentration, distraction or an error of judgement.
‘Once Nestlé had decided on the tools to be used to educate drivers it was then a matter of ensuring that the results of the programme could be measured across the business units and at an individual level,’ it adds.
‘With a combination of the fleet risk management reporting that SurePlan provides and individual user access to the Driving Safer programme, it meant that Nestlé could measure and track the success and see who had and who hadn’t completed the training. It could then apply some management pressure or incentives to increase driver participation as required.’
Russell White, managing director of fleet safety and risk management business, Driver Safety of Yatala, Queensland, Australia would like to see greater use of driving simulators as a training aid. ‘They are the safest and most effective way to combat risky behaviour, improve driver proficiency and better equip drivers with the skills necessary to create safer roads,’ he contends.
Even older drivers could find their use beneficial. ‘Recent research has shown that drivers aged from 40 to 59 demonstrate less of an understanding of basic road rules than their less-experienced counterparts aged from 18 to 24 despite their additional years behind the wheel,’ White observes.
18 to 24-year olds are however more inclined to talk on the phone or text while driving according to the same figures. On the other hand 40 to 59-year olds are more likely to drink and drive.
The value of some sort of simulator has also been acknowledged by AGENEAL of Portugal. Based in Almada, just outside Lisbon, the capital, it is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to increase energy efficiency and encourage the use of renewable energy.
Members include waste management, gas and water fleets along with the Faculty of Science and Technology at the New University of Lisbon.
AGENEAL’s activities include training fleet drivers to drive more economically. It is not however using a full-blown driving simulator, but an on-screen eco-driving game combined with the steering wheel and pedals used in video car race games.
It is inexpensive, and it works, AGENEAL reports. That is especially the case when the groups being trained are small.
‘There is time for them to compete for the honour of being the best eco-driver,’ the company says. ‘That means not the one who goes faster, as is the case with most video games, but the one who consumes and emits less.’
Onboard devices that show green, amber or red lights depending on whether the driver is driving sensibly or speeding, accelerating too harshly and taking bends too quickly are being deployed worldwide and are helping to drive down fuel usage and accident levels. Simply using GPS technology that automatically records the speed at which a vehicle is travelling in real-time combined with the awareness of the driver that his on-the-road behaviour is being constantly monitored can have an impact too.
That is the approach increasingly being taken by European bus and coach operator National Express and it is paying off. Working with Divas Technology the company has been able to achieve a 2.2mpg average improvement in fuel consumption across its Spanish coach fleet: worth having, given how much fuel coaches consume.
The initiative has included driver training with the emphasis on fuel economy. A perhaps-more-old-fashioned, but nonetheless effective, approach to encouraging drivers to slow down, burn less fuel, and reduce the risk of accidents is being taken by South African tanker fleet, Haulcon. Working with a number of parties, including insurer Santam and driver trainer Shayela Approved, it has combined a driver training programme with something called Driver Check.
Its trucks display a Driver Check sticker with a 24-hour call centre number that motorists can ring – hopefully using a hands-free kit – if they spot Haulcon drivers driving erratically.
‘Driver Check’s call centre has the email addresses of our managers and the details of all calls are automatically sent to them,’ says Haulcon chief operating officer, Izak Dreyer. ‘This means that we can give our drivers feedback at the end of every shift.
‘The incidents that have been recorded have been both positive and negative,’ he adds. ‘It is good to know that people definitely do phone in to say "thank-you" for good driver behaviour as well.’
Anything that addresses South Africa’s appalling road safety record has to be applauded. Santam points out that over 14,000 people are killed on the country's roads annually and that approximately 85% of fatalities can be blamed on human error.
The South African Department of Transport states that human factors contributing to accidents include drunken driving, excessive speed, not using safety belts, non-adherence to traffic rules, reckless driving such as overtaking when it is not safe to do so, aggressive and inconsiderate driving and drivers becoming distracted by the use of hand-held cell phones.
A grim list that requires tougher enforcement and a wholesale change in the attitudes of road users to whittle it down: and better training undoubtedly has a role to play too.