Driver safety compliance: it should be onerous, says shocked FSG chief

Too many organisations are continuing to pay lip-service to at-work road safety despite increased Government action and legislative measures designed to improve occupational road risk management.

The verdict comes from Fleet Support Group Chairman Geoffrey Bray in the wake of a new Government consultation document that outlines a new strategy designed to make Britain’s roads the safest in the world by 2020.

In addition, a raft of recent legislation including this year’s Health and Safety (Offences) Act and last year’s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act aim to punish rogue businesses.

Mr Bray has disclosed that in a number of incidents, tender documents produced by various organisations are failing to recognise the dangers presented if a company fails to manage work-related road safety. It appears that organisations are either failing to recognise the dangers of the legislation or are not recognising that by linking compliance to costs then overall fleet costs will come down. 

RiskMaster, FSG’s solution for managing work-related road safety, is used by a multitude of fleets including Dun & Bradstreet, the Labour Party, West Bromwich Building Society, Unison, WHSmith and QMH Hotels to ensure legislative compliance and that driver documentation is valid.

A shocked Mr Bray said: “The comments in some tender documents we are now seeing defy logic. RiskMaster is designed to satisfy stringent health and safety requirements. Drivers must comply with both the law and their employer’s policies and procedures to make sure they are safe.”

Additionally, he points to the cost-saving potential that businesses using RiskMaster have experienced through reduced crash rates.

“RiskMaster is a toolbox. The more a business uses the toolbox the safer their employees and other road users will be and the more costs will reduce,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Government’s long-term road safety strategy has been outlined in a new consultation document published by the Department for Transport called ‘A Safer Way: Consultation on Making Britain’s Roads the Safest in the World’.

One of the key recommendations is a new vocational qualification for van drivers designed to help them to enhance the skills they need to drive for work.

Although the new consultation document gives no further details on the vocational qualification for van drivers, last year’s Driving Standard Agency ‘Learning to Drive’ consultation document said they could be offered through awarding bodies like an NVQ.

That document said: “These would help drivers who want to demonstrate their high standard of driving, or who want to indicate that they have the skills needed to drive for work. We will work with employers to decide the scope of these.

“We would want this qualification to be recognised as being of real value indicating a high standard of driving which makes a person a real asset to any potential employers, who have indicated they need more knowledgeable and trained drivers.”

In 2007, the most recent year for which road casualty data is available there were 247,780 people killed and injured on Britain’s roads. A total of 2,946 people were killed and 27,774 seriously injured. The overall social and economic cost of road collisions is estimated at £19 billion per year.

Government estimates suggest that around 200 road deaths and serious injuries a week result from crashes involving at-work drivers, with more employees killed and seriously injured on Britain’s roads while driving on behalf of their employer than in any other work-related activity.

By 2020, the Government aims to cut death and injury on the roads by a third and the number of young people killed and seriously injured by 50%.

The consultation document can be accessed at http://www.dft.gov.uk/roadsafetyconsultation

FSG gears up to launch new generation of award-winning RiskMaster

Fleet Support Group is gearing up to launch a new version of its multi- award-winning online occupational road risk management system RiskMaster.

RiskMaster delivers both legislative health and safety at work compliance and financial savings with existing users reporting a string of cost benefits generated as a result of using information triggered by associated management reports.

Chippenham-based FSG has won a trio of awards from Brake’s Fleet Safety Forum for actively encouraging companies to focus on road safety.

Most recently, the company won the Forum’s 2008 Fleet Service Provider of the Year title, and FSG also won the Van Fleet Safety Award in the 2008 Fleet Van Awards and drove off with the Best Safety Initiative Award at the 2009 Fleet News Awards.

Now version two of RiskMaster, which has been developed in conjunction with existing system users, will shortly move into a user testing phase ahead of an anticipated autumn roll-out.

Utilising the very latest Microsoft .Net technology, RiskMaster II adds a new look and feel and brings bespoke customisation and a wealth of new functionality and report generation to enable businesses to refine their at-work driver safety management processes.

Data is then used to implement safe driving initiatives that help reduce the number of vehicle crashes experienced, which trigger significant financial savings including insurance premium reductions.

The focal point of RiskMaster II remains the Permit to Drive, which means each driver and vehicle annually passing a rigid ‘fit for the road’ examination with quarterly online driver declarations about licences and health status - to ensure employers are completely aware of all issues affecting their drivers. Failure to reply can mean withdrawal of a driver’s ‘permit’.

Employees are granted a Permit to Drive following a DVLA licence check, and an online driving assessment that is then used as the basis for any training as highlighted by the assessment, profiling drivers as ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’ risk. Vehicle maintenance records, insurance details and any data on crashes and motoring offences are also fed into the system.

As information is supplied, it is analysed by the RiskMaster software system, which then point-scores a driver’s data. If points rise above a preset level, management is alerted. A driver can qualify for a permit, or a temporary permit, or be denied.

The analysis is a continual process so every driver has a Driver Operating Life Report and they are simultaneously measured against their employer’s own specific parameters.

FSG Chairman Geoffrey Bray said: “Independent experts recognise that RiskMaster is already at the cutting-edge of managing at-work drivers, which is why the technology has won so many awards. RiskMaster II takes that management to a whole new level.

“RiskMaster not only delivers legal compliance, but our fleet customers are reaping significant financial savings by managing their drivers and reducing crashes.

“Compliance and cost are bedfellows and should be viewed as partners. Using RiskMaster will reduce corporate costs because all our existing users are experiencing financial savings. If costs are not being reduced then it is because management influence is not being utilised and interventions generated by RiskMaster are not being put in place.”

Visit FSG at Safety and Health Expo 2009

Fleet Support Group is exhibiting at this year’s Safety and Health Expo at the NEC, Birmingham, from May 12-14.

The focus of the company’s stand will be how its web-based RiskMaster occupational road risk management system can improve at-work driver safety whether employees drive a company-provided vehicle or their own car on business.

Safety & Health Expo 2009 is the UK’s largest health and safety event and is organised by United Business Media with the support of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the British Safety Industry Federation and the Institution of Occupational Health.

It is the second year in succession that FSG is exhibiting at the Expo and Chairman Geoffrey Bray said last year’s event proved to be an excellent venue for meeting safety and health professionals across all areas of industry.

Employees that fail to provide personal safe-driving data could face legal action

Employees who fail to comply with their employer’s best practice approach to occupational road risk management could find themselves in court, says a legal expert.

Many companies have highlighted that they are meeting vehement employee protests when asking for personal information and vehicle data - particularly in relation to privately-owned vehicle driven on business - when introducing at-work driving safety measures.

Some organisations using Fleet Support Group’s RiskMaster occupational road risk management have introduced their own ‘get tough’ policies in a bid to ensure employees sign up to obtain a Permit to Drive. Such policies include:

• refusing to pay mileage expenses

• banning employees from driving on business

• refusing drivers permission to hire a car

However, employees who continue to evade their employer’s safe driving policies and procedures could find themselves charged under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act if they are involved in a crash.

Section seven of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act says that all employees have a duty while at work to:

• Take reasonable care for the health and safety of themselves and others who may be affected by their acts or omissions at work

• Co-operate with their employer or any other person, so far as is necessary, to enable their employer or other person to perform or comply with any requirement or duty imposed under a relevant statutory provision

Kevin Basnett, a specialist employment lawyer and partner in West Country-based Goughs Solicitors, said: “Individual members of staff have an obligation to keep themselves safe.

“Staff who have been consistently asked by their employer to comply with reasonable requests for information to enable them to meet their best practice compliance obligations and are then involved a crash, perhaps because they are using a mobile phone, could be prosecuted under the Act.”

Prosecutions can be carried out in either a Magistrates’ Court or the Crown Court. Employees found guilty under the Act in a Magistrates’ Court could be punished with a maximum £5,000 fine or 12 months jail or both. In the Crown Court the maximum sentence is two years jail, an unlimited fine or both.

FSG Chairman Geoffrey Bray said: “Opposition to measures to improve road safety among at-work drivers must be overcome. We need to change some employees’ attitude towards road safety. Compliance with all company policies and procedures should be written into employment contracts.”

Mr Basnett, a legal adviser to FSG, added: “The legislation is something that companies are not using in a bid to ensure that employees provide the required information. However, it is a law businesses should use to ensure compliance.

“Boards of directors should ask themselves who is running the company; they or their employees? Firms must explain the rationale behind the safe driving measures they want to introduce and firmly regulate the process involved. If employees still fail to conform then more drastic steps should be taken, including disciplinary measures.”

Some of the biggest employee protests have come at heavily unionised employers, but the TUC backs occupational road risk management.

A TUC advice document says: “Work-related road safety must be a higher priority for employers and be integrated into employers’ arrangements for managing health and safety at work. Employers need to control work-related road risks and by doing so could save hundreds of lives every year.”

Public service trade union Unison overcame concerns through a series of meetings and regular communications and has successfully introduced RiskMaster.

Ian Smith, who introduced the initiative at Unison and is now an adviser to FSG, said: “The TUC view is important because many businesses are unionised. Employees should be reminded of the TUC view and the fact that the union they belong to is affiliated to the TUC which supports occupational road risk management.”

Businesses lack appetite for cost-saving changes despite recession

Cost-saving suggestions generated by Fleet Support Group are being ignored in many cases because, despite the recession, there remains a distinct lack of appetite for changes in fleet policies and procedures.

That is the view of FSG chairman Geoffrey Bray six months after the company launched its ‘Action Plan to Cut Fleet Costs’. The initiative encompassed a booklet detailing a range of cost-saving ideas and a web-based interactive forum to enable customers to exchange money-saving ideas, which can still be accessed at www.fsginteractive.com.

Many of the cost-saving ideas were generated by FSG’s Fleet Cost Reduction Steering Group, which continues to function and comprises 20 FSG client companies, automotive tax experts from advisers KPMG, lawyer Kevin Basnett, of Goughs Solicitors, and is chaired by Gary Kent, who runs Toot Rock Consulting and has around 30 years' fleet experience, latterly as European Fleet Manager at City business solutions organisation Dun & Bradstreet.

However, a disappointed FSG Chairman Geoffrey Bray said: “No organisation has risen to the challenges to take out fleet costs. Discussions reveal that in many companies there is a clear lack of appetite for change and therefore cost reductions will not happen.

“It beggars belief that companies will not grasp the nettle of cost reduction. The biggest single influence of cost on a vehicle is the driver. Managing drivers equals managing cost and in the current economic climate there has never been a better time to take action.

“FSG remains committed to helping customers operate more efficient businesses and some companies, particularly those on the Fleet Cost Reduction Steering Group, have introduced a wealth of measures and are reaping the financial rewards.

“But too many companies view change as confrontation with their drivers and ultimately they simply hope that cost issues will disappear.”

But, warned Mr Bray: “Many of today’s company car policies bear absolutely no resemblance to the current economic situation. Policies still hark back to the boom years when, in many cases, HR departments ruled and corporate excess was fashionable. In turn that triggered demand for company cars that were frequently more of a ‘fancy benefit’ than a ‘working tool’ and the launch of cash alternative schemes that have proved expensive luxuries for many organisations.

“Fleet managers who continue to plough the same furrow and expect their employer to be untouched by recession and job losses are living in cloud cuckoo land.

“We now have a completely different business model that demands a return to basics where common sense strategies prevail based on the core principles of knowledge, thinking policies through and calculating their impact.

“For many fleets this may mean wholesale changes to company car policies including longer replacement cycles, the introduction of cheaper vehicles and the end of financially creative company car opt-out schemes.”

FSG’s five-point cash-saving action plan comprises:

• A root and branch review of existing fleet policy

• Feed fleet data into FSG’s cost calculator to determine savings

• Implement FSG’s products, services and programmes

• Measure weekly and monthly key performance indicators

• Manage performance ongoing using all available tools within FSG’s systems

Setting demanding targets is essential for a successful action plan and the Fleet Cost Reduction Steering Group has been instrumental in drawing up a list of suggestions designed to stimulate the way businesses think about fleet management in the core areas of vehicles, drivers and journeys. Areas of focus should include:

• Are vehicles essential?

• If vehicles are required are they the most efficient available?

• Use vehicle carbon dioxide emissions as a mechanism to promote downsizing and link the argument to a driver’s reduction in benefit-in-kind tax

• Enforce the improvement of driving skills, which has a direct impact on vehicle-related costs

• Invest in telematics to manage driver, vehicle and journey performance

• Promote positive planning for all journeys to minimise vehicle use and link journey planning to the use of transport alternatives to cars

Implement a fixed fuel budget for every vehicle to reduce fuel use and stimulate sensible journey planning.