For businesses with mobile workforces, ending the day with all of your vehicles in one piece and safely parked where they’re supposed to be is always a win. However, simply because your vehicle was not in an accident doesn’t mean that your driver is operating the vehicle safely.
Information about driving habits is best gathered through the use of driver behavior monitoring and fleet management software. Let’s take a look at what fleet driver safety data can tell you and why it’s important to your business.
Driver behavior monitoring to track
Fleet management software will track data not only about the location of your vehicle, but also about how the vehicle is being used. For example, a driver behavior monitoring program will be able to tell you the vehicle’s average speed and compare that to the posted speed limit on the roads that the vehicle is using. You can use this information to identify drivers that are consistently violating speed limits, coach them, and improve fleet driver safety.
In addition to comparing your vehicle’s speed to posted speed limits, you have the option to set a maximum speed for each of your vehicles and receive notifications each time that speed is violated. This allows you to ensure that your drivers never push the vehicles beyond a safe speed, such as 70 or 75 MPH or even lower if you have vehicles that regularly carry heavy, dangerous or fragile materials.
You can also set up alerts to know when a particular vehicle experiences a hard-braking event. This can tell you a lot about driver performance, indicating that some drivers are not slowing down early enough when approaching stops, or worse, are following other cars too closely and risking a rear-end collision. The latter can be a major predictor of potential accidents and is a particularly dangerous driving habit.
Other driver behavior monitoring events include harsh turns and fast starts. These actions can be dangerous on the road and detrimental to the maintenance of your vehicle.
Benefits to your business
The primary benefits of fleet driver safety and monitoring driver performance are obvious: fewer tickets and fewer accidents, and ideally when accidents do happen, they will be significantly less severe. There are a number of other, less tangible benefits that can be seen as well.
For example, poor driving performance observed by the public (or current customers) can damage your company’s reputation, and its ability to land or keep business. Driver behavior monitoring offers you the chance to train and improve any undesired driving habits.
Collecting safety data
It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day operations of your business and let driver performance monitoring slip into the background – until an event such as a ticket, accident or another roadway incident painfully brings it to your attention. Effectively managing your fleet driver safety is no different than other aspects of your business and should be monitored frequently.
Looking for guidance to get a fleet driver safety system set up? StreetEagle is here to help. With 24/7 live support and over 22 years’ experience in monitoring and improving driver performance, we can get your driver behavior monitoring program rolling in no time.