In 2018* 520 people were killed in road collisions in Great Britain involving someone who was riding for work, driving for work, or a passenger in a vehicle being driven for work. This is twice the number of people killed due to other workplace activities.
The burden of risk, particularly for sustaining a serious injury, falls largely on members of the public who were not driving for work at the time.
Proactively managing road related risk is a key area of focus for many large organisations who employ people to drive in the course of their work. When an organisation works across a wide geographical area (even a number of countries), has many locations, or has a large supply chain, then proactively managing risk related to work related driving is an additional challenge.
In our experience, this type of risk can be effectively managed through
- Regular reviews and updates to company policy
- Optimising use of available telematics data from fleet vehicles
- Driver education and training
- Encouraging well-being and healthy lifestyles
Advances in telematics have provided new sources of data to understand the extent of the problem and indicate improvements to policy. Typically, we find that reviews of the data will reveal leading indicators of potential risk, such as speeding events and using a mobile device while driving, as being the behaviours of most concern.
The challenges
- How do you know what is the best approach for your organisation?
- How do you know what policies and reward schemes works?
- What will provide the best value for money against the degree of risk?
- Do you even know the level of risk your organisation is currently exposed to?
Our approach
To increase your levels of proactive management, you will receive from TRL a tailored consultancy package broadly based on a three-phased approach:
- Scoping the actual risk by improving the understanding and use of telematics data collected to accurately identify the real risk of collisions and undesirable outcomes
- Addressing primary areas of risk by developing policy and communications campaigns based on proven behaviour change techniques (nudge theory)
- Reducing specific undesirable risk-taking behaviours by implementing and continuously evaluating interventions to improve driver choices about their behaviours
Phase 1: Scoping
During the scoping phase you will explore with us:
- Your current road and driving related safety policies (for example, policies on when staff are to be reachable by phone)
- Availability and management of data from telematics or other systems that are used to monitor driver behaviour. We may propose staff surveys where there is insufficient data or gaps in data.
- Current messaging and other interventions to increase safety
- Analysis of results from telematics and survey responses to identify whether factors can be established that act as predictors of events or collisions, and if there are particular trends (for example differences between locations, driver types, or other correlations between variables)
- Possibility to streamline management of telematics data (ideally in real-time) to flag the highest-risk circumstances and direct immediate intervention.
Phase 2: Campaign development
Using knowledge and insight from Phase 1, your current approach will be benchmarked against best-practice. You will receive a Guidance Document proposing up to ten interventions which will include suggested changes to your policies, and identify any particular areas for more detailed review. It will also include your recommendations for campaigns and messaging, and activities that will encourage changes in behaviour.
Phase 3: Implementation & evaluation
Your new delivery and evaluation strategy will be based on best-practice and will be co-created with you to ensure that the processes and data collection methods are relevant and do not impact on your existing commercial practices. As before, any strategy will need to take account of the any international activities.
TRL expertise
You are literally in safe hands by choosing the work with TRL. We are leading the Driver2020 £2 million project for the UK Department for Transport researching educational, technological and training interventions for improving novice driver behaviour, and reducing novice driver collision rates, via real-world Randomised Controlled Trials. We are also evaluating and re-developing educational behaviour change programs for traffic offenders through the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme (NDORS).
We have supported many countries overseas with driver safety campaigns and have a good understanding of international differences in relevant policy and regulation.
Our Collision Investigation consultants also provide expert witness and forensic analysis of fatal collisions involving work related driving for all types of vehicles, and in many different countries.
*most recently available statistics
