6 Ways to Establish Safe Driving Patterns Among Your Fleet Drivers

For businesses that deploy fleets, driver safety is a matter of public responsibility. But is simply training your fleet drivers to be sure to “drive safely” truly efficient? Not really. It’s crucial for your company to strive for much more. 

To develop a real culture of safety, it’s crucial for fleet administrators to narrow their focus to the individual levels and inspire good driving habits that can add up to big results. But in order to do this, a fleet manager must know exactly which behaviours to address; in doing so, you can adjust your coaching accordingly and be effective in cultivating a safe driving mindset among your employees.  

Unsafe driving behaviour patterns 

Aggressive and unsafe driving behaviour endangers the lives of everyone in the traffic. We often see drivers: 

• Not wearing a seat belt or speeding 

• Following another driver too closely or tailgating 

• Not using signals when changing lanes or improper lane change 

• Failure to yield to pedestrians or traffic who have the right way 

Safe driving behaviour patterns

Obviously, the best driving behaviour is that which prevents motor vehicle accidents on a daily basis. While they may sound like common driving practices, it can be easy to ignore some of them after a short time on the highway. Fleet managers should encourage fleet drivers to reduce distractions from other passengers, mobile devices, loud music, or anything else that may detract them from driving. 

Fleet drivers should not drive while under the influence or tired, as fatigue and drowsiness are among the most prevalent causes of accidents. Using mirrors before backing up or changing lanes, maintaining a safe distance behind other motorists, and being aware of surroundings at all times can help drivers ward off accidents. 

Ensuring your fleet drivers follow these key safety tips can go a long way toward improving overall fleet safety and reducing poor driving behaviour. The next best thing is establishing a series of safe driving patterns and a group of metrics to measure driver performance. 

1. Use telematics 

Many fleet owners implement telematics solutions, but they neglect to leverage the data collected, often missing important advantages. Yet turning recent data into actionable insights is the initial step to improving fleet driving patterns. 

Telematics allows fleet managers to track routing, braking, acceleration, and speed in real-time. But they can also identify areas that need the most help and use that data to manage safety measures to address common driving issues.  

Telematic solutions have been around for some time now. They offer precise data focused on human factors rather than just vehicles themselves. The amount of data collected using telematics systems are turned into coachable driver safety programs, creating awareness of risky driving behaviour and helping to reduce wasteful and dangerous driving patterns like quick starts, speeding, and harsh cornering. 

2. Create a driver safety policy 

Right from the start, the most obvious purpose of telematics is to create a safety policy revolving around fleet drivers. Fleet managers can bring themselves to the driver level by including:

• History records and trip logs – to make drivers aware of driving patterns 

• How to conduct a vehicle care routine – and why should they never neglect it 

• Examples are when drivers get fines, demerit points, license suspension, etc. 

• What involves dangerous driving behaviour (talking on the phone, texting, distracted driving, etc.) 

• A statement on the consequences of accidents

Fleet owners should communicate this policy to their drivers and review it with them every month, if not weekly. 

3. Fleet Maintenance – A Top-of-Mind Priority 

Clearly, when your fleet vehicles are almost perfectly maintained, they are more reliable and efficient. That’s why maintenance is a critical aspect of your business’s health. Routine fleet maintenance not only helps fleet drivers reduce breakdowns and downtimes, but it may also prevent road accidents. 

Normally, employing a fleet management platform will allow fleet managers to monitor vehicle status at any given time, not to mention they will receive a real-time notification whenever something is malfunctioning. Also, fleet managers can notify individual drivers to stop and fix the malfunction before it advances to a breakdown – or something worse.   

4. Real-time notifications and alerts prepare drivers for the worse 

Real-time notifications are maybe the most effective way to act proactively and fix any dangerous driving behaviour as they happen. More precisely, fleet managers will know when one of their drivers are: 

• Surpassing the speed limit 

• Accelerate suddenly 

• Hard braking 

• Tailgating

• Sharp turning 

Real-time alerts may save lives if not save businesses employing fleets from immeasurable expenses and a bad reputation. 

5. Travel logs say a lot about driving behaviour

Fleet managers should consider fleet vehicle trip logs if they plan on improving fleet driver behaviour. That means analysing every log in order to get more precise insights into driving activity; over time, fleet managers will begin to tell the difference between different driving habits and address a safety driving pattern if necessary.  

Travel logs can also help you motivate your fleet by telling when and what driver deserves a recompense for impeccable driving patterns. You can offer appropriate feedback and rewards to motivate the individual driver’s performance. Such rewards can uplift better driving and compliance. 

6. Invest in ongoing training 

Another way to promote safe driving patterns among your drivers is to use telematics solutions for continuous education. Telematic solutions allow fleets to use data to direct training and create a series of customized workshops. Through ingoing driver training, your fleet will become more aware of their dangerous driving patterns and start to correct them. 

It makes perfect sense that in order for education to be effective, it must be deeply entrenched in the culture of the fleet company and not something fleets should do, say, once a year.