Who decides when and why a fleet driver becomes ‘high risk’?”

Many fleet managers have a gut feeling about who their worst drivers are but in truth, the reasoning behind that feeling can often be subjective and anecdotal, sometimes it is arrived at through personal experience but rarely is it based on incontrovertible empirical risk management evidence? 

The reason is because it is actually quite difficult to ensure that the correct drivers are selected for the correct reasons and that the correct remedial action is applied because in all organisations there are forces in play that can often prevent accuracy and fair play. 

So, the questions to ask in order to get this right should include: 

• Who’s doing the measuring of driver risk or is it system driven?
• What set of measures are being used?
• Are the measures of risk consistently applied?
• Who judges the severity of the discovered risk?
• How often is the measuring of risk carried out?
• How accurate are the results?
• What external influences are applied to the results?
• Who decides (and how quickly) what to do about the results?
• Who measures the success of any remedial action taken?

In addition to these questions, a fleet must rely on the broadest set of measures before investing in driver training because multi-source inputs to decision-making will demonstrate patterns, confirm or deny any subjective thoughts and remove any objections from the driver.

Please contact us now if you’d like to know more about how best to identify and reduce high risk driving.

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

What's the point of Telematics if you don't use it?

The majority of fleets now use one of the seemingly numerous telematics solutions available in the UK.  These systems use a combination of technologies to monitor other road users, location, speed, driving behaviour, fuel usage, idling time and several other important aspects of driver and vehicle performance. 

Apart from the most obvious advantages these systems offer such as tracking and speeding, there are a number of lesser-known applications for the technology that would create even more savings and safety if the available data stream from ‘black-box technology’ were only managed properly. 

Notwithstanding these other benefits, it is incredible how many fleets we encounter who go to the effort of identifying a need for telematics, trawling the market for a suitable system, obtaining Board approval for the investment, implementing the fitting of units over many weeks and then, unbelievably, failing to act on alerts issued by the system and never even looking at the provided online Portal. 

This raises a number of important questions:

• Are some telematics systems being bought simply to tick a few legal compliance boxes
• Do fleets fail to allocate the job of managing the telematics data feed to somebody knowledgeable and with time available
• Does the allocated person with responsibility for managing the data have no authority to act upon it?
• Has the accumulated data proved to be difficult to access or indeed to be unreliable?

As telematics providers don’t offer the management service, it seems the main responsibility for interpreting and acting upon data produced by black-box technologies lies with the end-user fleets unless the fleet chooses to outsource that responsibility to a fleet risk management company that includes such a service within its range of products. 

The job of work to manage the data stream can vary hugely according to the quality of the output offered by the various telematics systems and therefore a fleet should consider this aspect of the system they choose.  In fact it may pay dividends to involve the risk management provider in the process of procuring the best system. 

So what’s at stake here? In a nutshell, those fleets that fail to use their telematics data stream properly may lose the opportunity to reduce claim frequency, may fail to evidence liability positions in loss recovery and third party claim situations, may lose the chance to reduce expensive insurance premiums, may threaten brand reputation and may also miss the chance to improve the safety and productivity of their drivers. 

RVM Assist is based in Leeds, West Yorkshire and has been successfully analysing telematics data stream for its fleet clients for the last 5 years.  It is one of the UK’s longest standing full service providers of consolidated fleet risk and accident management services. For more information, visit www.rvmassist.co.uk or call us on 01132248800.

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

Other than legal compliance, what else should outsourced fleet risk management do for you?”

This question goes to the heart of what fleet risk management is really about. 

In addition to satisfying your duty of care, many fleets buy fleet risk management to reduce insurance costs, others feel strongly about protecting the company brand and still others simply wish to increase safety for drivers and the public at large. 

So let us look at how these extra motivations behind fleet risk programs actually benefits end-user fleets:

• Supply chain simplicity - any well-constructed outsourced fleet risk management program should smooth out the supply chain by offering only one solution that assesses and resolves all possible areas of driving-risk  for a fleet.   

• Ease of operation – a single supply arrangement means the fleet only has one contact, one set of reports, one cost, one review meeting and one contract to deal with and that saves time and money  

• Time-savings internally - this consolidated risk solution saves time and money for fleets by avoiding manual processing and maintaining spreadsheets.  For example, manual check licences and manual consolidation of different risk metrics.  

• Internal expertise - Fleets can also avoid the need for specialist software and suppliers as well as the need to employ internal risk expertise.  In-house risk management may be self-defeating if the wrong conclusions are drawn from the data.

• A view of the future – An insurance premium is determined by historic information so to control the future, Fleets need to be able to predict which drivers are the most likely to have accidents and why.  Armed with that data, action can then be taken to offset much of that risk.
   
  If you are interested in an outsourced solution that provides all of the above benefits, call us now on 01132248800 or e-mail us at info@rvmassist.co.uk
   
  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

“Driver Licence Checks – just a compliance issue or actually much more than that?”

Clearly, it is important to make sure that your main fleet and grey fleet drivers are legally allowed to drive.  That much is obvious and demonstrated by the fact that most fleets now have a formal checking procedure in place.   

However, a licence check result can do much more than perform a simple compliance test.  Indeed, the results can be more meaningful when set alongside the results of other types of driver metrics such as a claims history, online driver assessments or indeed the most recent telematics data feed. 

Consider for a moment that a licence check can represent confirmation or denial of discovered driving habits, it can reinforce decisions about types of remedial action as well as prompt training needs such as speed awareness, mobile phone policy or familiarity with UK road signs. 

Ultimately, a licence check result may also uncover high risk endorsements that link with driver attitude and which may prompt the creation of a specific in-vehicle training course that contains material designed to address that particular type of risk. 

If a fleet uses licence check results in isolation then important improvement opportunities may be missed.  That means any remedial action taken (in good faith) may contain the wrong messages given to the wrong drivers, which will have no impact on reducing insurance costs or claim frequency.

Therefore if you would like more information on how to enhance your Licence Checking data, call us now on 01132248800 or e-mail us at info@rvmassist.co.uk

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


 

Why is average repair cost so important?

Typically, 20% of Fleet drivers will be involved in a road traffic accident every year.  The knock-on effect of these incidents involves a lot of time and money for drivers, fleet managers, insurers and other people linked to the event.

Usually the largest element of cost is the damage repair itself and this is the first reason why Average Repair Cost should be an important focus for the policyholder.

Incredibly, for normal fleet cars and vans, the Average Repair Cost can be as high as £1,500 or as low as £800 according to a number of interesting factors:

1. Who is responsible for estimating the damage?
2. Who checks how the estimate was prepared?
3. Who is ultimately responsible for paying the bill?
4. How is Average Repair Cost calculated?
5. What repair method is being used?
6. What quality of repair is required?
7. Whose repair network is involved?
8. What terms are in place with the repairers?
9. Does the final invoice match the estimated cost?

Insurers calculate fleet premiums based on what they have to pay out plus what it costs them to manage the claims so Average Repair Cost is intrinsically linked to fleet insurance costs.

So, if your average repair cost is towards the top of the scale, you may wish to ask yourself why that is the case and what can be done to lower it.  The answers may be surprising to you.

If you don’t know your average repair cost and realise that you should know, why not bring in RVM Assist for a free analysis of your last 12 months claims on a confidential basis?

You can find us at www.rvmassist.co.uk or call us on 0113 224 8800 and ask for Angela or Diana.

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

The accident season is here with three months of high risk

According to statistics we’ve gathered (over nearly 20 years of managing fleet accidents), your fleet drivers have a 20% increased chance of having an accident in the next 3 months compared to the rest of the year.

This begs the following three important questions:

1. Which drivers are most likely to have a problem?
2. Why do we know (for a fact) that those are the drivers most at risk?
3. What can we do to minimise the likelihood of an incident occurring?

Our research also indicates that:

• less than 20% of fleets use claims statistics when planning a driver training program
• less than 50% of fleets that have Telematics actually use the data to help reduce accidents
• less than 10% of fleets know whether drivers who had training went on the be involved in an accident

The truth is that implementing fleet risk tools is easy

but using risk data to reduce accident frequency is not.

If, like most fleets, you want to see results in terms of reduced accident costs (both insured and uninsured) and better safety for drivers, then the management of your fleet risk program needs time, systems and experience.

Talking the safety talk is easy if you know your onions whereas walking the safety walk is rather more difficult and many fleets are only just realising there are actually 2 stages to success in this area.

If you’d like the full story……and a happy ending then call RVM Assist on 0113 224 8800 or go to our website for more information, www.rvmassist.co.uk




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

 

How to avoid a disjointed Fleet Risk program?

You may also ask; Why is a joined up risk program so important? 

In the same breath you may even ask; What business risks am I running if my risk program is in fact, disjointed?

So, the simple answer is to say that a joined-up risk program gives you the best chance to protect your drivers, your brand and the public.  Additionally, your business will operate more effectively and fleet-associated costs (such a fuel and fleet insurance premiums) will be reduced. 

However, if you have risk data stored in separate clusters, in different departments, in different formats, then poor decision-making can follow, which will undoubtedly scupper any chance of capitalising on these important benefits. 

Whilst poor decision-making can be caused by a lack of risk management expertise, bad timing and inaccuracies, many bad decisions (about who constitutes the risk, why and what to do about it) very often stem from a lack of joined-up thinking between different departments such as HR, Transport and Health and Safety.

For example, in practical terms, it would be unwise to invest in driver training based purely on licence check results.  Training may be a Health & Safety issue whereas HR tends to look after licence checking.

Similarly, if you don’t use Telematics you may wish to do Online Driver Assessments before choosing individual drivers for remedial action. These two functions may also be governed by two separate departments.

In a similar vein, why don’t more fleets look at claim causation factors more closely before spending hundreds of pounds on training drivers and how many fleets actually ask drivers about why they think the incident occurred before spending money on training?  Same issue again.

Generally speaking and from our research, it seems that the Fleet department still points the way when it comes to how much and what kind of risk initiatives a fleet should invest in. 

However, both HR and Health & Safety have a major input and influence as driver performance is being monitored.  In truth, whichever department takes the lead role has the job of avoiding this costly and disjointed approach.

Of course, as a combined claims and risk reduction specialist, RVM Assist can supply and manage all risk-related functions whilst being accountable to all departments so avoiding the chance of waste time, effort or funds that could occur through a disjointed approach to fleet risk management.

Why not take a closer look at what we’re up to?

Call Diana or Angela on 0113 224 8800 or email enquiries@rvmassist.co.uk

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