Keith Halasy, Senior Director of Marketing, Azuga
“Should I stay, or should I go?” Your workers ask themselves this question countless times each day. Driving on the road and approaching yellow lights, with no red in sight. Maybe behind on their schedule or late for an appointment, they speed through, risking their safety and the lives of others.
Drivers who fail to stop on red increase risk for your business and for your community. In light of these dangers, the National Coalition for Safer Roads partnered with organizations across the country to raise awareness of the risks of running red lights during National Stop on Red Week.
The most recent reports by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety show that 709 people died and 126,000 were injured in red-light running crashes in the United States in 2014 alone. Even more unfortunate is that more than half of those people were innocent pedestrians, bicyclists and occupants in other cars. What’s most astonishing is that accidents caused by aggressive driving are 100% preventable.
So, how do you make sure your drivers aren’t driving aggressively? The impacts on public safety, as well your risk, insurance premiums, costs and company reputation make this a crucial problem to solve. Here are a few ideas.
- Prioritize safety—all the time: The best and most important way to curb aggressive driving behavior is to make safety a priority and consistently discuss it in team meetings and with individual workers. Publicly praise those that maintain high safety scores. When addressing workers showing aggressive driving, make sure to look at both individual events as well as trends. Make sure to ask questions that may help uncover root causes, like changes in personal routines, changes in traffic patterns and other issues that delay drivers or have them watching the clock.
- Get the right technology: You can implement a fleet tracking solution that alerts you and the workers when he or she exhibits aggressive behaviors. Our alerts and safety reports help you monitor for a full range of aggressive behaviors, including hard braking, sudden acceleration, speeding and hard cornering. Having information to detect aggressive driving is critical to controlling it.
- Give “atta-boys” (or girls) for safety whenever you can: If you use fleet tracking solution only to catch people making mistakes, it will quickly influence workers’ attitudes about the solution and management. Instead, make sure to focus on recognizing and rewarding those employees that are doing it right. Businesses using Azuga Fleet are able to see stack-rankings of the workers based on the driving safety, and easily congratulate them and even send a reward through the system to the workers’ phone. Turning safe driving into a friendly competition in your team creates a fun, engaging on-the-road experience for drivers.
Every driver is responsible for their safety and the safety of others on the road, not just during Stop on Red Week, but every day. We understand the impact that aggressive driving can have on your business. Join us in sharing National Stop on Red Week’s message by using #StopOnRed2016 and talk with one of our fleet specialists today for a demonstration of our capabilities to boost driver safety.
