Safe driving champion fleet Arval is taking the promotion of occupational road risk management to a new level following the formation of an industry-leading Road Safety Working Party.
The Arval Road Safety Working Party is backed by CEO, Jean-Marc Torre, chaired by the company fleet and road safety manager, Tracey Young with support from the company’s director - market insight, Mike Waters, and includes representatives of 20 companies, with this number steadily growing.
It has now compiled a 10-point action plan to help other organisations put in place safe at-work driving policies and procedures.
“Education, debate and advice are the three strands of the group,” explained Mr Waters. “Representatives of the companies on the group are all learning from each other and they are now taking the safe driving message to other businesses.”
Fleet and fuel card management company Arval, which deals with more than one million drivers and has 40,000 customers, was one of the first businesses to become a ‘business champion’ within the Government-backed ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign delivered by RoadSafe.
The campaign uses companies that have implemented occupational road risk management best practice to pro-actively promote safe driving to the wider business community, including their customers, suppliers and organisations in their locality.
Arval, which won the Fleet Service Award in the 2008 Prince Michael International Road Safety Award, has recorded a decline in both the number of crashes involving company-owned vehicles and associated repair costs following the introduction of its safe driving programme five years ago.
Now operating a 320-strong company car fleet, Arval made electronic stability control (ESC) a mandatory feature on all new vehicles acquired last year. Now, Ms Young is considering stipulating that the fleet will only include models that gain a top five-star crash test rating from the European New Car Assessment Programme.
Arval’s fleet policy currently embraces models from Audi, BMW, Ford, Mercedes, Mini, Renault and Volkswagen as well as the hybrid Toyota Prius.
In addition, a further 180 employees drive hire or pool cars on company business - own car use is banned - and all those people must now complete the same driving licence checks, online assessments and driver training programme as their company car driving colleagues.
Ms Young said: “In 2007 our incident rate was 40% and last year it dropped to 33% and in 2009 we are on track to be below 30% and our third party costs have more than halved in the last four years. The majority of our incidents are now low speed parking and manoeuvring.
“Our road safety culture and policies continue to evolve and we are also now taking the message to the family and friends of employees. Everyone has a role to play in keeping death and injury off the roads.”
Most recently that has seen Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service take its ‘Safe Drive; Stay Alive’ roadshow to Arval’s Swindon headquarters. Normally seen by young drivers and military personnel, it was the first time that the event had been hosted by a business.
Ms Young said: “The impact on employees, their family and friends was phenomenal and we are now recommending the roadshow to other Wiltshire businesses.”
In addition, Arval recently hosted 24 local businesses and explained to representatives its approach to road safety with help from the emergency services, local authority road safety partnership and the Driving for Better Business campaign.
Ms Young said: “The fire and rescue service attends more road crashes than fires. They are passionate about reducing death and injury on the roads and I would recommend to all companies that they talk to their local emergency services about the risks posed and how they should be tackled.”
Businesses represented on the Arval Road Safety Working Party include: giant heating and plumbing products distributor Wolseley UK, which is also a ‘business champion’, the Royal Mail, Arcadia Group, tool company Snap On, leading elevator and lift company Kone, international service company Serco Group, environmental and engineering consultancy Entec UK and pneumatic and electrical automation technology Festo.
The group meets approximately quarterly and Mr Waters said: “As a business we have put in place a wide range of measures that have improved the safety of our staff when they are driving. Everything we have done makes sound business sense so we felt there was much more we could do and involve our customers and prospects.
“We believe the ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign is an excellent route for raising awareness of occupational road safety and the benefits that accrue. By engaging more organisations we hope that they will go on to also become ‘business champions’.”
The Arval Road Safety Working Party is composed of companies that have implemented corporate road safety strategies as well as those that are finding it difficult to overcome hurdles within their businesses.
Mr Waters explained: “By bringing organisations together we can formulate views on how key issues should be best managed and we can learn best practice from each other. There is a need to make road safety information more relevant to the day-to-day operational challenges that individual businesses face.
“We also want to encourage more public and private sector fleets to become more pro-active in discharging their entire health and safety responsibilities and move away from focusing on how to combat one specific regulation, such as corporate manslaughter or mobile phone use.”
Experts are also invited to the meetings to provide information and advice on fundamental fleet safety issues. These have so far included a demonstration of the City Safety system fitted to the Volvo XC60, which is claimed to be the safest ever car from the marque; an exchange of views with a representative of the Department for Transport, which is currently compiling its next 10-years road safety strategy; and a demonstration of how ESC can prevent road crashes.
10 steps businesses should take to improve their occupational road risk management
- Elicit boardroom support for the safe-driving programme and, if necessary, recruit external expertise to reinforce the road safety argument and help prove the business case to senior management
- Gather data on the number of crashes involving business drivers, where they are taking place and the type of incidents they are
- Target resources where they will have the maximum impact - on high risk drivers - but that can only occur if crash-related data is available
- Introduce an ongoing road safety communications programme
- Build the company’s approach to road safety into staff recruitment and induction programme
- Ensure management processes extend to ‘grey’ fleet use - employees who drive their own vehicles on business
- Fulfil legal requirements by checking all driver and vehicle documentation and ensuring all vehicles are serviced and maintained in accordance with manufacturer schedules
- Ensure road safety reporting is a fundamental part of general line management reporting
- Ensure vehicles driven on business meet the highest safety criteria - eg: meet the four or five-star level of the European New Car Assessment Programme, are ESC equipped and, if reversing crashes are identified as a ‘problem’ then reversing sensors are fitted
- Ensure drivers understand their safe-driving responsibilities and keep tyres correctly inflated, fluid levels topped up and other equipment, such as lights, in tip-top working order
Mr Waters said: “Taking such action will result in a reduction in crashes involving at-work drivers, businesses costs in many areas will be significantly reduced and fuel use and CO2 emissions will be cut.”
‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign director Caroline Scurr said: “We are delighted with the work undertaken by all of our ‘business champions’. Our campaign is all about taking a business message to public and private sector organisations about the importance of work-related road safety. Arval is doing just that through its working group and its other activities. We would welcome and encourage businesses from all sectors to adopt similar innovative approaches to sharing good practice.”
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