Fleet managers urged to join safety benchmarking project

Poor accident analysis is hampering efforts to improve fleet safety according to new research.

Fleet managers are being urged to benchmark their levels of work-related road safety against other companies.

The research report, entitled Work-related Road Safety Benchmarking, concludes that despite the huge potential for benchmarking to help managers effectively monitor, improve and evaluate work-related road safety, poor and incomparable data has been a recurring barrier in almost every benchmarking project to date.

Produced by Interactive Driving Systems, road safety charity Brake and BT, the report was funded by fleet insurer Zurich to help launch a new and innovative fleet safety benchmarking project.

It aims to help fleet managers improve their data and providing an easily-accessible online analysis tool.

More than 200 fleet managers, representing over 200,000 vehicles, have already registered for the project.

According to Jools Townsend, head of education at Brake, 16 people die and 116 more are seriously injured every week in road crashes involving at-work drivers.

With these horrific casualties in mind, the industry should take every opportunity to work together to develop collective knowledge of how best practice risk management can prevent crashes. Benchmarking can be a vital tool, enabling fleet managers to understand their crash data and take effective action, added Townsend.

To take part in the project, fleet managers should log on at www.fleetsafetybenchmarking.net