A series of podcasts bringing real insights into the hazards of driving for work are now available through the Driving for Better Business (DfBB) campaign.
Covering both car and van fleet safety challenges, the 30-minute talks are being run as part of the Let’s talk Fleet Risk initiative and explore the distractions of hands-free phone use, managing a major vehicle operation including grey fleet cars, and the rights and wrongs of van safety use.
In Driver Distraction: an inconvenient truth, DfBB campaign manager Simon Turner chats about hands-free phone use with Dr Gemma Briggs, cognitive psychologist from the Open University and an expert on driver inattention. The podcast discusses the distractions inherent to hands-free conversations and what employers can do to make driving safer for their employees and those sharing the road with them.
In Van Drivers & Operators: who’s aware? Mark Cartwright, head of the National Highways Commercial Vehicle Incident Prevention Team, chats with Simon Turner about van safety, overloading and vehicle maintenance as well as driver wellbeing. He also talks about National Highways’ Operation Tramline campaign, which monitors drivers committing “mundane but dangerous offences” such as eating at the wheel, or checking social media.
The final show is the NHS Hospital transport: a gigantic challenge episode, in which David Malone, the transport and travel advisor for the Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, talks to Turner about ensuring outsourced transport providers meet their legal obligations to manage road risk, and how the Trust’s transport activities will need to develop in the future to meet their zero carbon ambitions.
