News
Driving for Better Business
The Fleet Safety Association is playing a pivotal role in the newly announced, DfT-funded and RoadSafe-managed programme, 'Driving for Better Business'. The high profile campaign seeks to identify 'Business Champions' who have successfully implemented risk management programmes for their business drivers and reaped the resulting financial rewards. RoadSafe will then mentor the champions and assist them achieving high profile publicity for their best practice activities, in the hope that more UK organisations will follow their example.
Fleet Safety Association members RoSPA and Drive & Survive have put forward their respective clients Tesco and Chelmsford Electrical as the first two Business Champions, both companies being in the targeted 'home delivery' market, albeit at opposite ends of the commercial scale. Both have compelling success stories to tell, details of which will hopefully be featured in a variety of media over the coming months.
Pro-Drive joins the IAM Group
Fleet Safety Association member company Pro-Drive of Stafford has been acquired by the IAM Group of companies and will now be known as IAM Pro-Drive. There will be no disruption of driver training programmes being delivered to any existing Pro-Drive clients.
Member wins Fleet News Award
Fleet Safety Association member Drive & Survive has won a coveted 'Fleet News Award'. The Bloxham-based company was awarded the 'Best Risk Management Company' accolade at a glittering ceremony in London's West End earlier in the year. This comes on the back of double success in the national 'Business Car Awards' where Drive & Survive not only won the 'Best Risk Management Provider' but also 'Best Service Company' overall.
Road Safety Bill
Much to the surprise of most people in the road safety industry, the Road Safety Bill received Royal Assent in November 2006. Although not all the detail of the proposed new penalties has yet been finalised, the principal points that will affect business drivers and their employers are as follows:
- There will be a new offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving which will attract a custodial sentence of five years.
- The fine for careless and inconsiderate driving alone will rise to £5000.
- Drivers convicted of using a hand held mobile phone whilst driving and failing to have proper control of a vehicle as a result will be automatically have three points applied to their licence and be required to pay a £60 fine.
- There will be more varied fines for those caught speeding; penalties will be lighter for smaller violations and larger than the existing fine structure for excessive speed, although the exact detail has yet to be finalised.
Association member launches new product
A new on-line driver training system ‘e-drivertraining.com’ has been designed and developed by e-trainingworld, in partnership with Pro-Drive, the award winning fleet risk management and driver training company. E-trainingworld is a new sister company to Fleet Safety Association member Pro-Drive, which has been set up to concentrate purely on web based training applications.
“Unlike many other systems, e-drivertraining.com is highly interactive and actually enables you to test out your driving skills and road safety knowledge through animated training sections whereby you physically take control of a vehicle in order to improve your braking, manoeuvring, gear changing and observation skills as well as many other aspects that would be looked at during an in-vehicle session”, said Graham Hurdle, managing director of Pro-Drive.
“The system also provides training on hazard perception techniques, driving in different weather conditions and the dangers of using a hands free mobile phone whilst driving. As a dynamic system, all of these items are interactive enabling the user to try out what they have learnt as if they were actually behind the wheel.
“When coupled with our web-based driver profiling system, which we launched 18 months ago and has been helping fleet operators assess the risks of their drivers quickly and effectively, the 2 systems together offer a total solution to major fleet operators seeking to manage their occupational road risk.
“As part of your duty of care obligations organisations must ensure they take a responsible attitude to the safety of their at-work drivers and these 2 systems enable the majority of these duties to be catered for at a fraction of the cost and more quickly than ever before”, concluded Hurdle.
To find out more log on to www.pro-drive.co.uk or www.e-drivertraining.com or contact Jonathan Mosley on 07939 158033.
The official 2005 UK road casualty statistics:
Overall there were 271,017 road casualties, with 32,155 people being killed or seriously injured.
For the first time, the DfT has analysed the latest road collision statistics and identified the involvement of drivers who were 'at work' at the time.
It transpires that 54,935 at-work vehicles were involved in on-road incidents during 2005. This means that 15% of all vehicles involved in on-road incidents were being driven for work purposes, with a further 9% involved in journeys either to or from work premises.
The DfT also looked more closely at the causes of road incidents. As if we needed affirmation of our much emphasised 'See and be Seen' advice, 32% of all crashes were attributable to drivers 'failing to look properly'. Interestingly, only one in 20 collisions involved a driver exceeding the speed limit at the time.
Overall the number of people killed in road incidents fell by one per cent, from 3,221 in 2004 to 3,201 in 2005.
The number of children killed or seriously injured in 2005 was 3,472 (down eleven per cent on 2004). Of those, 2,134 were pedestrians, nine per cent down on 2004. In total, 141 children died on the roads.
Pedestrian casualties were 33,281 in 2005, five per cent lower than 2004. There were 671 pedestrian deaths, the same as in 2004 but serious injuries fell by five per cent to 6,458.
The number of pedal cyclists killed rose by ten per cent to 148 in 2005, the highest level since 1999. The number of seriously injured also rose, by two per cent to 2,212.
There were 24,824 two-wheeled motor vehicle user casualties in 2005 but the number of seriously injured decreased by two per cent to 5,939 and the number killed decreased by three per cent to 569.
The number of deaths among all car users in 2005 was 1,675, four more than in the previous year. The number seriously injured fell by eleven per cent to 12,942. Total casualties among car users were 178,302, three per cent lower than 2004
