Almost 6,000 UK professional drivers achieved GreenRoad's Fleet Elite status for 2014, the company has announced - a 33% increase on 2013's count.

The percentage of drivers with perfect GreenRoad Safety Scores grew even more rapidly.

The percentage of drivers who achieved Fleet Elite status skyrocketed from 6.8% of GreenRoad drivers in 2013 to almost 9% in 2014.

132 drivers completed 2014 with a perfect GreenRoad Safety Score, 43% more than in 2013, whilst almost 720 drivers had near-perfect scores, indicating an average of just one risky manoeuvre per 100 hours driving.

Fleet Elite status is awarded to drivers who maintain a GreenRoad Safety Score* of five or less whilst logging over 500 GreenRoad driving hours during the calendar year. 

Drivers earn the coveted bronze, silver or gold Fleet Elite badges in recognition of, respectively, one, two or three consecutive years of consistently outstanding safe and fuel-efficient driving behaviour.   

“This year, we saw heightened excitement about the Fleet Elite programme among drivers as well as fleet managers. Drivers wear their Fleet Elite badges with pride and work hard to maintain their eligibility for Fleet Elite membership, year after year, in order to reach gold and silver levels,” said Dougie Portwood, Head of GreenRoad Change Management team of experts.

“Fleet managers confirm that the programme has had a significant positive impact on driver safety and performance, attributing its success to factors including the power of incentive programmes and across-the-board commitment of managers, drivers and unions to  increasing safety and reducing operating costs.”

With almost half of its qualifying van and truck drivers attaining Fleet Elite membership, Iron Mountain ranked as the GreenRoad fleet with the highest proportion of Fleet Elite drivers. 

83 Iron Mountain drivers joined the Fleet Elite ranks this year as Bronze members, joining 105 members who have maintained their excellent safety records for two or three consecutive years.

This year’s Iron Mountain Fleet Elite “class” includes 50 more drivers than last year, reflecting a significant drop in the number of driver safety events.

Rory Morgan, head of logistics support for Western Europe at Iron Mountain, said: “We are immensely proud of our drivers who have once again endorsed their growing reputation as being some of the safest performing drivers on our roads, not only in the UK, but also in Ireland, Germany and Spain. Our drivers deliver a first class service both for our customers and for other road users.

“We are also one of the few companies that incorporate ‘Speed by Speed Zone’ into our scores. We are averaging less than one speed violation per vehicle per week. I feel that this record is quite a phenomenal effort from our drivers. It endorses the fact that you don’t have to speed to get the job done.”

Another strong performer in driver safety is Bunzl, which uses the GreenRoad driver behaviour and fleet performance system in its vans and company cars. 102 of its 983 drivers achieved Fleet Elite status, with a particularly strong representation from its Retail Division and Catering Division with 20% and 15%, respectively, of their drivers earning Fleet Elite badges.

Bunzl Cleaning and Hygiene believes so strongly in the motivational strength of Fleet Elite that its uniform shirts include the Fleet Elite logo for drivers who qualify.

In the bus and coach segment, 4,102 Stagecoach drivers qualified for Fleet Elite. Some 21% of Stagecoach’s 19,000-strong driving team have achieved the prestigious benchmark, more than any other bus company using the GreenRoad system. This figure is up from 14% in 2013 despite substantial growth in the overall number of participating drivers. Of these, 77 drivers had perfect GreenRoad Safety Scores, up from 57 drivers in 2013, indicating that they had not executed even a single risky manoeuvre during all their hours behind the wheel, throughout the year. 

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