When you think of dangerous work, what comes to mind?
The defense force, firefighters, and police may be at the top of your list, but what about heavy vehicle drivers?
In Australia, around 80 workers die each year while working on or near a heavy road vehicle (Safe work Australia Chair).
Speeding and fatigue play an important role in these deaths.
Therefore, having the right fleet management systems in place is essential to managing the safety of vehicles and drivers.
When heavy vehicles are involved in a collision, the severity of the collision is usually much more severe because the mass of your vehicle elevates the forced collision involved.
Thus, GPS tracking provides the transportation industry with effective solutions to manage drivers and the chain of responsibility to ensure safety on the road. That’s how:
1. Security before a shift begins:
Mitigate risks with early detection, most GPS tracking solutions provide declarations of service and pre-departure checks that walk drivers through a set of customizable safety criteria before starting a shift.
If a problem is detected, an alert is immediately sent to a supervisor via email or SMS and the driver will not be able to start the shift before the problem is resolved.
2. Reduce speeding:
Speed is the main contributing factor to heavy vehicle accidents. Loaded trailers take 20-40% farther than cars to stop, even longer when roads are wet and slippery (Transportation for NSW).
The only way to mitigate the risk of speeding is to monitor drivers and prevent it from happening.
GPS tracking provides automated speed detection solutions in all speed zones, managers can receive alerts:
– When a driver is accelerating;
– Where a driver is accelerating; and
– Why it happened.
With two-way communication managers, you can provide drivers with live feedback on their driving performance so they can make real-time corrections and increase road safety.
GPS tracking and fleet telematics provide safe driving solutions and reliable tools to detect speeding and identify the causes, managers can implement safe driving policies and train drivers to avoid speeding.
3. Fatigue management:
Driver fatigue is unstoppable. Affecting anyone, at any time. Unfortunately, no matter how experienced the driver is, no skill can overcome the biological need for sleep.
The trucking industry denies the natural sleep pattern, and many long-distance trips go well into the night and into the morning. Therefore, effective fatigue management is essential for the safety of heavy vehicle drivers.
GPS tracking provides chain-of-responsibility systems that have control measures to address fatigue, including electronic log books, automated violation alerts, and driving hours recording.
Overall, fleet telematics and GPS tracking solutions provide seamless and efficient communication between managers and drivers; Instant information is received via mobile devices and an in-vehicle display unit so managers have an unprecedented level of insight into their operations.
Help your business grow and expand by maintaining a safe work environment, you will increase efficiency, and most importantly, ensure that your drivers get home safely.