This guide outlines why and how you need to pay attention to the safety aspect of corporate fleet management, both for your staff and vehicles.
Making your business fleet safer is a responsibility you might have overlooked. However, it is an important part of corporate fleet management because your business vehicles are a core part of your service, and they also represent your company. Therefore, you must make every effort to ensure they are safe on the road. This helps keep your employees and the general public safe. Additionally, you reduce any liability resulting from an unfortunate incident if you do everything necessary. Here are some general tips.
Safety tactics for corporate fleet management
Ensure Your Drivers are Qualified
Almost every country has roads with a lot of traffic, which your drivers will have to get around when they are out and about. But, unfortunately, not all drivers are as good as we would like them to be. Every year, there are more than 250,000 car accidents in just one US county. This means business is good for any car accident lawyer. You just don’t want your business to be the one that has to go to court. So it’s best to make sure your drivers are competent and reliable as part f your corporate fleet management.
Have a Professional Inspect Your Business Fleet
In addition to the daily walk-around checks your drivers do, you might want to have a qualified mechanic do safety checks on your vehicles from time to time. This is a more detailed check of the vehicle’s mechanics. It could be done every three months or every six months between corporate fleet management routine maintenance to make sure the vehicle is safe to drive at the time of the check. Between annual tests, a lot can go wrong that the driver might not notice but could still be dangerous.
Employ a Fleet Manager
Fleet Managers employed by you can set up preventative safety systems for vehicles and keep records in case they need to be inspected. A Fleet Manager is in charge of making sure that company employees don’t go over the agreed-upon mileage for their vehicles. They are also in charge of all operational aspects of corporate fleet management, icluding making sure that your company’s fleet is in good shape. You decide how to take care of the fleet. But a manager who has been chosen well can do most of the work related to vehicles.
Plan Your Vehicle-Related Issues
Use a forward planner or another kind of calendar to make sure that all of your vehicles are fully insured and taxed, with coverage for business use and within their check-up dates. This is a particularly important corporate fleet management strategy for cars in the “Grey Fleet” that are owned by employees and driven by them. You can’t always count on your employees to show up on time. So tell your staff to give you copies of these documents, and if they don’t, you can take disciplinary action against them.
Have Your Drivers Assessed
Good fleet management requires employees to know your rules about cell phones, how long they can drive, vehicle weight limits, how to load a vehicle safely, and what to do in case of an accident. In addition, you should check their driving skills and road knowledge:
- Ensure they are healthy enough to drive.
- Consider another role if they have a chronic illness like epilepsy.
- Perform random drug tests.
- Hold road safety seminars.
- Verify licenses, permits and qualifications.
It’s most helpful to write down and record what training you’ve assigned to your drivers. Training makes it easier for your employees to follow the rules. And it shows the officials that your company is serious about corporate fleet risk management such as CameraMatics when it comes to road safety and not just saying it is for the sake of doing so.
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Keep Accurate Records of Vehicles
Keep a file for each vehicle with all records of maintenance, insurance, registration, and safety checks. If any of your cars is involved in a major accident, the police or other transport authorities that are looking into it have a lot of power to come to your place of business and take documents. Having your records in well-organized files that are easy to find will show right away that you have strong and effective corporate fleet management systems in place for preventive maintenance.
Operate Compliance Procedures
As a business, you are obligated by law to keep track of who is driving a certain vehicle at a certain time, in case the vehicle is captured on a speed camera, for example. If you don’t, you’ll have to pay a fine. You must also be capable of demonstrating that you follow the road rules in your country. By having your drivers fill out timesheets, or using timesheet calculators, you can do all of these things and keep track of how many hours they are on the road to make sure they don’t get too tired.
Promptly Make Repairs to Your Business Fleet
Vehicles are always getting broken. Normal wear and tear, accidents, and electrical problems happen often. If a driver finds a problem, they should be able to tell you about it. Set up a system as part of your corporate fleet management to ensure the problem is fixed and keep track of all work done to your vehicles. This can be a precise repair report and copy of the bill from the repairer, or it can be as simple as a manually written document with a signature to confirm that the repair work was done.
Join a Breakdown Organization
Don’t take the chance that one of your vehicles will break down and leave a driver broken down on a busy road, where they could endanger people’s lives. Every second you spend on a busy road makes it more likely that something bad will happen. You can join a breakdown service. You can pay a monthly fee to these companies, and they will come quickly to help a stuck driver, tow your car, or even fix it on the side of the road if it is needed and safe to do so.
Summary
Keeping your business fleet in top condition is a priority for safety in corporate fleet management. It helps with safety issues, liability, and compliance. Failure to do so can result in heavy legal action, especially if the worst should happen. In the event of one of your vehicles causing death or serious injury, you can be held responsible and fined or imprisoned if it’s found that you neglected safety. So, ensure your drivers are qualified, assess them regularly, and check and repair your vehicles daily.
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