Road safety has a material impact on business, from employee safety to supply chain performance and overall business productivity. Road safety statistics reveal a major challenge globally and at home.
• Globally, road traffic deaths and serious injuries around the globe remain at a staggering 1.25 million and 50 million respectively.
• The World Health Organization estimates, road traffic deaths and serious injuries are expected to be the seventh-leading cause of death worldwide by 2030
. • On average, four people are killed and 90 are seriously injured every day on Australia's roads.
• Annual cost to the Australian economy has been estimated to be at least A$27 billion.
Business has a golden opportunity to influence a significant improvement in the road toll, principally through a sharpened focus on vehicle safety and influencing driver behavior. Shaping the right driver behavior remains both the biggest challenge and opportunity to push continual improvement in driving safety.
Technology can help and what gets measured gets managed. Advances in information technology, such as telematics and GPS provide businesses with crucial information on their own fleet and their contractor’s fleet road safety performance. Such information can help improve safe driving behavior, and identify and focus on key performance indicators in driving safety improvements.
The new telematics technology can help an organization test and verify how their own and contractor vehicles are being driven. With GPS tracking and Telematics, a business can accurately track vehicle location, speed, breaking and acceleration, and a host of other measures to provide essential data to management on how all fleet vehicles are driven.
Major companies such as BP have created heavy and light vehicle safe driver recognition programs and provide globally reward and recognition for safe driving through their annual Driver of the Year events. Information to select such excellence in driving is extracted principally from their worldwide IVMS (Telematics) systems. Businesses that do not have telematics systems available to help them understand their driving safety risk should seriously examine the benefits and consider installing them.
The benefits far outweigh the cost. For more information on how Pinpoint GPS Telematics can help improve your driver safety and increase your field work force productivity contact Pinpoint Communications on 1300 728 882 or email AVLsales@pinpointcomms.com.au for more information.
Author: Aidan Hayes Owner and Managing director of Extraordinary Safety Pty Ltd
