Most light-duty fleets are not regulated by the Department of Transportation. Thus, there is no specific “fleet safety certification” or demarcation for being “fleet safety certified.”
Even so, you shouldn’t wash your hands of fleet safety training altogether. You stand to gain so much by implementing effective fleet training for your drivers. You stand to lose so much if you ignore pressing safety training issues.
Truck drivers, bus operators, and other CDL drivers are all mandated to receive special training to drive for a living. Your vocational drivers are not mandated to receive any training beyond their basic driver’s license, but they face the exact same risk.
Whether your drivers are spraying for pests, fixing downed wires, or dealing with city water conditions, the most dangerous thing they do is drive. They face the most risk for accidents, injuries, and even death when they get behind the wheel.
You don’t need to accept this as a cost of doing business. You can prevent accidents, injuries, cost of loss, and protect your drivers. It all comes down to risk management.
As we’ve established, your drivers face risk. They face the risk of others out on the road and their own unsafe behaviors. Without proper training and safety education, they could cost you money and suffer or cause serious injuries.
However, if you implement effective fleet safety training, you can reduce or eliminate that risk.
More specifically, you will benefit from:
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When you invest in fleet safety training, you save money, save time, and protect your people. But where do you begin?
There are three components that every effective fleet safety training program has:
When you hire a new driver, you likely run their MVR, check that they have a license, and give them the keys. That’s not enough to reduce their risk. If their job requires them to drive, they are a professional driver. As such, they need a leg-up on all the amateurs out there putting them at risk.
You should assign online safety training to every new hire. Ask that they complete it before they even come in for their first shift. Of course, you will need to pay them for their time, but that is much cheaper than paying for the rear-end collision they’re likely to cause.
Implementing online training is easy. Programs like The Fleet Safety Course allow you to:
If you invest in a program like The Fleet Safety Course, you’ll enjoy a positive return on investment in a matter of months.
Online driver training will teach your drivers essential knowledge about defensive driving. However, defensive driving takes more than knowledge. It takes skill.
If you want your drivers to know how to be defensive drivers, they need practice. That’s why we recommend you implement a behind-the-wheel driver training program for new hires.
An effective BTW program will:
Of course, developing your own behind-the-wheel training program can be a challenge. We’ve created a defensive driving certification process called LLLC Defensive Driving Certification. LLLC stands for Look Ahead, Look Around, Leave Room, and Communicate.
Our process certifies your instructors and allows them to certify your drivers. It’s a cost-effective and highly-effective process that millions of drivers have gone through. The result is always fewer accidents for your company.
Do you remember how to solve a quadratic equation? Do you remember all of the events leading up to WWI? Or, how about any of the major themes from The Great Gatsby?
Of course you don’t.
Just like you don’t remember everything from freshman year of high school, your drivers won’t remember everything from their new-hire training. That’s why you need a way to offer your drivers continuous driver safety training.
We recommend you host monthly safety meetings to cover a loss-leading indicator in detail. You could focus on maintaining a safe following distance, performing safe turns, how to navigate intersections, etc.
Our studies show that when a company focuses on a loss-leading indicator each month, that accident type goes down by 20% or more for that month.
You can create your own materials or invest in an off-the-shelf safety meeting program like our Monthly Safety Initiative.
Regardless of your preferred approach, ongoing training is key to overall fleet safety.
Any company with drivers faces tremendous risk of loss and accidents. To avoid that risk, these companies must implement:
With these three strategies, you’ll be “Fleet Safety Certified” as far as we’re concerned. That means you’ll have fewer accidents, save money from reduced cost of loss, save yourself time dealing with emergencies, and protect your employees.
Accidents aren’t just “the cost of doing business.” You can prevent them and become a world-class safety organization.