As a fleet manager, one of your top priorities is to protect your fleet drivers as they go about their daily business. In the past, managers had to simply hope for the best. Today, there are technologies and tools at your disposal to assist in improving fleet safety.
Azuga’s DriveSafe is an excellent example. With DriveSafe, fleet managers can monitor and prevent distracted driving, keeping commercial fleet drivers safe on the road. Not only will this type of telematics fleet management benefit your drivers but it will also improve your bottom line.
It’s estimated that unsafe driving costs an average of $16,500 in the instance of a simple accident. If there’s an injury, that price goes up to more than $74,000. If there is a fatality, the monetary price can be $500,000 or more. Since a large proportion of accidents can be attributed to distracted driving, it seems this is a concern of vital importance. In fact, in 2018 alone, distracted driving caused nearly 3,000 deaths on the roads in the U.S.
The Impact of Distracted Driving on Your Fleet
Distracted driving can be a major problem for commercial fleets. If an employee has an accident on company time or in a commercial fleet vehicle, the company is ultimately going to be held responsible for any damages caused.
Distracted driving statistics are staggering. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the most common cause of fatality on the job is related to transportation incidents. Fleet Owner magazine found that transportation accidents accounted for $57 billion in expenses in a single year. And getting caught texting while driving can raise insurance rates by 23 - 63 percent depending on the state.
But the costs of distracted driving go far beyond the monetary expenses associated with an accident. There’s lost productivity while your driver recovers or your vehicle is repaired. You may incur regulatory fines from DOT or state or local authorities. Wear and tear on the vehicle means you may have to replace it sooner. You may have to pay out for workers’ compensation for your employee. And your company’s reputation may take a hit, both in the public eye and in your CSA score.
When you consider these distracted driving facts and the many costs involved, one thing becomes clear. Your fleet cannot afford to not address the problem of distracted driving.
What Is Azuga DriveSafe?
Azuga’s DriveSafe™ program is an award-winning technology that uses our OBD-II tracking device. This technology, coupled with the Azuga FleetMobile app, can monitor and even stop fleet drivers from using their smartphones to call or text while driving.
DriveSafe doesn’t keep drivers from checking in with the home office while in the field like some similar programs. Instead, it only blocks cell phone use while the vehicle is actually in motion. So your drivers can still call and text while they’re at their destination or pulled over in a rest stop.
Additional Features to Benefit Your Fleet
Azuga’s DriveSafe program is an excellent way to discourage some of the most common types of distracted driving, but it has many further benefits as well.
Our Driver Safety Rewards program scores your drivers based on several factors related to safe driving. Top scorers can earn rewards like gift cards to thank them for a job well done. This creates a competitive atmosphere around a fleet’s safety program, encouraging driver buy-in and boosting employee morale.
DriveSafe is also easily configured by fleet management to meet the specific needs of your fleet. Fleet administrators can set a vehicle speed threshold, adjusting the speed at which cell phone blocking is activated. They can whitelist specific numbers such as the home office and emergency services. Specific applications can be allowed through including those used for fleet purposes. And handsfree calling can be allowed through, meaning a driver with a headset would be allowed to make and receive calls if the fleet manager approves. DriveSafe even has a rejected call message so that whoever is trying to get through will get a notification via SMS that the driver is currently unable to answer.
More Safety Features from Azuga
The safety benefits from Azuga don’t stop with DriveSafe. Our entire fleet management system offers a number of technologies that will improve the safety of your drivers on the road.
Take our dashcam solution, Azuga SafetyCam. This dual-facing fleet dash camera offers you the ability to see what was happening on the street and inside the cab at the moment of an incident. This means you can monitor your drivers for risky behaviors. You can exonerate your drivers in the case of an accident with solid video evidence. And with this evidence, you can lower insurance premiums and reduce claim resolution times.
Another option for improving fleet safety is to use our Azuga Coach program. This program assesses driver safety by monitoring behaviors on the road. Then it creates a personalized video training system for each driver to address the flaws in their driving behavior. For one driver in your fleet, this may include coaching against speeding, while for another it may involve hard braking and acceleration. Each driver sees the coaching videos that apply to his or her driving habits, to help improve safety across the fleet.
One of our most popular safety programs is Driver Safety Rewards. Azuga Fleet gives each driver a safety score based on their road habits. Drivers can monitor their own scores through the Fleet Tracking App. To encourage safe driving practices, your fleet can then reward top drivers with gift cards to places like Starbucks, Amazon, and their favorite restaurants. This creates healthy competition among fleet drivers to be the safest on the road. It also boosts employee morale and gives you greater buy-in to all of your safety programs.
So if you’re looking for another way to keep your drivers safe on the road and protect your business against the costly effects of distracted driving, get a demo of Azuga DriveSafe today. You’ll be amazed at all the wonderful ways Azuga Fleet can help make fleet management easier and more effective.
