Fleet safety has an endless array of benefits for your business. It keeps your drivers and everyone else on the road safe. It also ensures that your business maintains a positive reputation, remains efficient, and avoids costly accidents that hurt your bottom line. If your fleet doesn’t prioritize fleet safety above all else already, it may be time to reconsider. Let’s go over how to improve fleet safety in five ways.
No. 1: Create a Fleet Safety Program
A fleet safety program is a series of policies that ensures your drivers are well-versed in safety procedures and best practices for driving. Creating one should be your first step when you’re looking to prioritize safety within your fleet. There are four elements you must consider when creating your safety program:
- Safety Policies
- Maintenance Needs
- Identifying Drivers
- Implementing a Thorough Screening Process
Check out our glossary entry on the subject if you want to learn more about this process.
No. 2: Install Dashcams
Dashcams don’t only serve as a witness after an accident occurs. They are also instrumental in preventing them in the first place. How? Artificial intelligence dashcams record what’s happening within the cab, detecting distracted driving behaviors and alerting you to act on them. For example, Azuga’s AI SafetyCam can detect behaviors like:
- Eating/drinking
- Using phone
- Smoking
- Yawning/fatigue
- Face not visible
- Not focused
- Obstructed camera
These dangers frequently cause accidents, so detecting them is key to keeping your drivers safe.
No. 3: Prioritize Maintenance
Maintenance may not immediately seem like a safety concern, and indeed keeping up with vehicle health has various other benefits, but safety is undoubtedly among them. If vehicle parts malfunction, they can easily cause accidents. A flat tire can send a driver off the road. Faulty brakes can cause a truck to rear-end another vehicle. Luckily, with maintenance alerts, it becomes easier to keep up with your fleet’s maintenance needs. This technology uses telematics to track when your vehicles need maintenance and lets you know immediately, so you never fall behind. This not only saves your fleet money and time but also keeps your drivers safe.
No. 4: Implement Fleet Tracking and Geofences
You may be surprised to learn that fleet tracking also has safety benefits. Fleet tracking particularly comes in handy for safety when it comes to geofencing. Geofencing involves drawing a perimeter around a specific area of the map then receiving alerts when drivers enter or exit that zone. This means that if your drivers aren’t where you expect them to be, you’ll be the first to know and can check in on them. Fleet tracking gives you comfort that everything is in order with your fleet, whether in terms of efficiency or safety.
No. 5: Provide Optimal Coaching
Some fleets only provide training when their drivers join the team, and this isn’t sufficient to ensure their safety on the road over time. To ensure improved driver performance, fleets should reinforce training regularly. Dashcams can provide footage for contextual training based on real events. This makes training more relevant to drivers and keeps them engaged. It is essential to base training on real-life, relevant situations, so it sticks with drivers and ensures their safety on the road.
Get the Best Safety Tools
At Azuga, we have your fleet’s safety in mind when we create all of our tools. From our dashcams to our fleet management software, we are committed to keeping your drivers safe. Team up with one of our fleet experts for a demo to see what our tools can do for you.
