When you think of fleet tracking, you likely think of your day-to-day operations, like dispatching drivers and updating routes as needed. Your first thought probably isn’t improvements to fleet safety, even if that is a major priority for your business. But fleet tracking and driver safety go hand-in-hand.
Fleet tracking isn’t just the use of GPS, but a whole array of driver tracking tools that monitor behavior, vehicle status, and more to ensure that all is well behind the wheel of your vehicles. How can you use your driver tracking app to improve safety in your business? Let’s break it down below.
Track Driver Behavior
A great asset of fleet tracking software is a technology called telematics. Telematics can track nearly anything, including speed, location, fuel efficiency, HoS, maintenance requirements, and just about anything else you can conceive. When emphasizing driver safety, you’ll want to use it to track driver behavior. This means harnessing telematics to monitor problems like speeding, harsh braking, rapid acceleration, and hard cornering. You can’t be in the passenger seat of your vehicles, but you can still be privy to these problems when they arise.
With proper fleet tracking software, you can generate reports that show how often these problems occur. It makes it far easier to see if it’s a one-off mistake or a bad habit that requires intervention. And if intervention is needed, your fleet tracking solution gives you the data you need to provide targeted and specific coaching that focuses on the problem at its root, wasting no time and addressing the issue quickly.
Track Maintenance Needs
Your drivers’ actions are only half the battle when it comes to their safety. Of course, you have to ensure that the vehicles are safe too. Telematics is also your friend in this regard; it can track maintenance needs like tire pressure, engine status, battery needs, and more. Your fleet management software should have maintenance capabilities, so you can set up alerts linked to your telematics that will let you know when service is needed on any part of your vehicle.
Preventative maintenance means addressing these problems before they become dangerous to your drivers and everyone else on the road. Prioritize these alerts, and keep up with regular inspections and pre- and post-trip checks. All these can be digitized with maintenance software, so you don’t have to worry about tedious paperwork or losing things in the shuffle.
Track Location
We mentioned tracking location for the convenience of your day-to-day tasks, which is the main reason to track your drivers’ location. However, you also keep your drivers safe when you know where they are throughout the day. Being out on the road is dangerous, particularly if drivers travel in rural or high-crime areas. You’ll be able to see on your tracking app if something strange happens and a driver goes off course so you can check in.
You can even be proactive and set up a geofence – a virtual perimeter drawn around a specific area. You determine what happens when vehicles travel through this perimeter; for example, you can set alerts to go off when your vehicles travel outside the perimeter during certain hours or at any time. This means you’ll be the first to know when theft occurs or when something may be off with your drivers.
Invest in the Best of Driver Tracking
When you care about your drivers, you want the best for them. That’s where Azuga’s driver tracking comes in. We’re experts in fleet management and know all kinds of fleet industries inside and out. Try a demo of our software and see what we can accomplish for your drivers’ safety together.