Whether you’re a small retailer that uses a single truck driver to deliver products to customers or a large wholesaler, manufacturer, or haulage firm operating an entire fleet, you want your drivers to be as safe as possible. That’s to guarantee their personal safety on the job, as well as to protect your assets and the items that you’re shipping from place to place. In this guide, we’ll share how you can increase the safety of your trucks and the drivers within them in order to avoid injuries and extra costs.
Recordings
Dashcams are becoming more and more popular for truck drivers as a way to help protect them while encouraging safe and reliable driving. By installing fleet dashcams on all of your vehicles, you’ll be able to:
- Track all of your driver locations in real-time
- Encourage safe driving because your drivers will always be being recorded
- Show footage of crashes in which your driver is not at fault in order to benefit insurance claims
- Aid in training, showing your fleet drivers examples of both good and bad driving in your own fleet
All of these benefits are important for firms that are looking to increase the safety and security of their drivers.
Training
Your fleet will be trained in how to drive. Many of them will have been behind the wheel for years, and some of them will have decades of experience. But even the most experienced drivers can be liable to crashes, especially seeing as the roads keep changing in terms of new hazards and risks. Some examples include:
- New vehicles trucks drivers aren’t yet used to, like electric scooters and other motorized vehicles
- New road markings and safe-driving zones that might provoke unusual behavior on the roads
- Changes in traffic patterns as a result of the pandemic and the disruption it has caused
Noting these changes to driving conditions in the modern world, you should seriously consider whether your fleet might benefit from a special safety training program – helping them spot uses and incidents before they take place and supporting their mental health as they do so.
Maintenance
The trucks that your drivers use each day are also themselves sources of hazards and risks. They cannot all be relied upon to drive perfectly and without fault year after year. And when something goes wrong with a truck – be it a blown tire or serious engine damage – it can endanger the driver and other road users around them.
It’s in this sense that vehicle maintenance should be seen as a high priority for those firms that are looking to enhance the safety measures they have in place around their trucks. Any fault can cause an accident, after all. And while maintenance can cost you thousands of dollars a year, it’s a great deal cheaper than a single accident on the road and the resulting fees you have to pay in order to settle legal disputes and insurance claims.
Make your fleet as safe as possible with the three main tips outlined above – designed to keep your drivers happy and healthy behind the wheel at all times.
