“In-vehicle Telematics” – New solutions prompting new questions?

It seems there’s been a renewed and increasing interest in Telematics as technology develops and the need for greater road safety becomes mandatory for fleets.

Of course, like any technology, its invention prompts new questions for Fleets as they wrestle with the best way to use the information that is now available.

These new questions might be:

• Which department should take responsibility for this technology – Transport, Health & Safety, HR, Finance or Operations?
   
• What information, that we can now see, should we use and what does it actually tell us about our drivers?
   
• How often should we review the information being collated and how do we make sure that the data is reviewed at the intervals we agreed.
   
• At what point should we become unhappy about the level of risks being displayed and how often should we be unhappy before we take some action?
   
• What action should we take, who should take it, when should it be taken and how do we measure if the action we took actually worked?

This could be the recipe for the ‘perfect storm’ as fleets invest in expensive technology to ‘solve’ a safety issue and actually end up being potentially liable because they didn’t read or act upon the high risk data that was available to them via the Telematics system in which they’d invested.

If I had £1 for each of the fleets I’ve visited who admit to not really using the data being provided by the expensive Telematics system that had been fitted to the fleet, I’d be a wealthy man!

In truth, fleets don’t always know the answers to these new questions, which is why all Telematics systems should be provided with a management service that can answer them – but they’re not.  So, the fleet is left alone to decide what to do.

The Broker doesn’t know the answers and nor does the Insurer and that’s because the answers depend on three key factors that are pertinent only to the fleet:

• In terms of driving safety, how risk-averse does the fleet wish to be?
• Where does the fleet sit already on the risk management scale?
• What appetite (and budget) is there to tackle the adverse data that is discovered?

The difficulty arises where the fleet doesn’t even know the answer to these three questions and yet someone has already invested considerable sums into acquiring the Telematics system in the first place.

At RVM Assist we monitor any Telematics system and we answer all these questions on a daily basis on behalf of our clients.  Why not check with us (confidentially) to see if our answer sheet is the same as yours?


Call 0113 224 8800 and speak to Angela today.

At RVM our integrated approach allows us to help fleets to implement effective safety policies, analyse trends and identify high risk drivers. Our Driver Training program is targeted, timely and appropriate.  The result is lower accident rates, improved driver safety, and reduced costs.