6 Tips To Improve The Driving Behaviors Of Your Employees

If you own a commercial trucking business or are a fleet manager in a logistics company, it would be your responsibility to supervise the fleet, its drivers, and their driving behaviors.  

According to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the number of fatal crashes involving large trucks or buses increased by 8 percent from 2016 to 2017 in the USA. 

Closely monitoring and assessing the driving behaviors of drivers is very crucial for the safety of the general public and the company’s business as well. 

Benefits Of Improving Driving Behaviors 

The advantages of improving the driving behavior of your employees are not just limited to avoiding road accidents. They extend in more dimension that you could probably think off the top of your head. 

You can effectively implement protocols and use various equipment to improve the motor skills of your truckers. This will lead to increased revenue generation for your company and more safety for all.

Uphold The Reputation Of The Company 

By improving the driving behaviors of drivers like intelligent rerouting and efficient route planning, customer satisfaction steadily improves positively, contributing to the reputation of the company.  

Furthermore, as road accidents are minimized, the company will face minimal consequences, which helps you maintain good public relations. 

Reduce Operational Costs 

Efficient route planning minimizes waiting in traffic and also saves a lot of time while getting from point A to point B.

Fuel is one of the most high-priced commodities for a transportation company. Efficient route planning can save thousands of dollars per year in the long run by optimizing your fuel consumption.

Better fleet management systems will promote healthy competition between drivers leading to lower idling times that or overloading of the vehicle, thus minimizing preventive maintenance and repair costs. 

Improves Road Safety 

This is a big win for both the public as well as the organization’s business. Healthy driving behaviors like not exceeding speed limits and complying with Hours of Service (HoS) will dramatically minimize road accidents and collateral damage.  

In addition to the costs that the wreckage of goods and vehicle repairs pose to the company, the likelihood of lawsuits against the company by affected people increases drastically. This further affects the business financially and puts a dent on its reputation. 

How Can You Improve Driving Behaviors? 

With the help of today’s revolutionary advancements in science and technology, there are several ways by which you can improve the driving behaviors and performance of your employees and also promote healthy competition among them. 

Here are six tips to significantly improve the driving performance of your fleet operators.

Use Dash Cams 

Installing a dashboard camera in all your fleet vehicles is a great first step you can take to improve your employees’ maneuverability. Dash cams serve as great tools for documenting driver behaviors. 

In case of any unforeseen incident, a dash cam’s recording can be played back to assess the fault. Additionally, the presence of a dash cam gives the driver as well as the fleet manager a sense of security to confidently carry out their work. 

This is achieved by providing the user’s visibility into distracted driving and near-misses using g-sensors and embedded artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Check out Samsara.com’s truck dash cam to help improve the safety standards of your company. 

But dash cams have evolved past just their basic functions of recording videos and storing. 

With embedded Artificial Intelligence (AI), the intelligent dash cams of today can even provide real-time assistance to the driver with built-in speakers. The incident is then automatically uploaded to a dashboard, which can be viewed by fleet managers from anywhere in the world.

Fleet Tracking Reports 

Fleet tracking reports are great for motivating the drivers to constantly keep up their performance and maintain healthy practices.  

These reports help in the following ways: 

  • Document driver behaviors so that managers can review them at any point in time.
  • Help the organization reward the best performing employees. This motivates the drivers to keep working and promotes a healthy work environment.
  • Ensures that drivers comply with the Hours of Service (HoS) regulations.
  • Help reduce fuel consumption by monitoring driving patterns.

Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIRs) 

Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIRs) reinforce the good driving behaviors of your employees. Since the drivers will be required to regularly update vehicle conditions by taking multiple pictures before and after their trips, they would be more careful than ever while driving on the road.  

These reports can be combined with fleet tracking reports to help the drivers maximize their productivity while keeping maintenance and repair costs of the vehicle to the minimum. 

Use ELDs 

Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) can be installed easily on your fleet’s vehicles by simply plugging into the onboard diagnostics (OBD) port.  

ELDs help to provide useful insights on vehicle condition and driver performance by acquiring diagnostic data of the vehicle. This serves as a great risk mitigation technique because of improved HoS visibility, connected operations, and better compliance. 

GPS Fleet Tracking 

By using GPS fleet tracking software, fleet managers can track their fleet accurately in real-time. This helps the drivers stay on course according to the established route plan without second thoughts. Any deviation from the planned routes will be alerted to the fleet managers immediately.  

This fleet optimization method reduces overall operational costs, improves efficiency, and increases compliance. 

Current IoT enabled GPS trackers even offer the option of monitoring vehicle performance by providing visibility into vehicle diagnostics.

Training The Drivers 

Although installing tracking software and a dashboard camera plays a pivotal role in improving driver behaviors, it is also important to reduce human errors. This can be achieved by training the drivers.  

Samsara’s complete video-based driver safety program has resulted in 50% fewer accidents and 60% lower costs while complementing risk mitigation and improving return on investment (ROI). 

Conclusion 

Implementing these six useful tips in your company’s fleet managerial processes will have profound impacts on revenue generation and return on investment.  

Encouraging the drivers to perform well will also complement greater customer satisfaction and help to increase your organization’s clientele.