If you manage a construction or ready-mix fleet today, you’re aware that:
- Vehicles work in very confined spaces that are difficult to maneuver — typically backing into locations to unload. As a result, these fleets sustain a significant number of backing incidents.
- Because of their significant size, vehicles may not incur significant damage, but rather, cause it—resulting in costly third-party claims.
- The tilted rotating drum mixer and concrete cause ready-mix vehicles to be highly susceptible to rollovers—resulting in costly property losses and possible personal injury to drivers, other motorists and pedestrians.
If you own or manage a fleet, collisions happen. But, why?
Safety management continues to be top-of-mind for any fleet. You need more effective solutions that deliver the driving insights required to proactively reduce risk and lower collisions. To achieve this goal, leading construction and ready-mix fleets are adding on-board video-based performance improvement platforms to their safety programs. Programs that go beyond cameras include managed services and analytical insights that provide the missing link into actual driver performance.
Following are four reasons why you should consider investing in such a program this year:
1. You can’t manage what you can’t see
Keeping drivers, cargo, and vehicles safe is the top priority for any fleet. And a variety of investments are likely to have been made to achieve that goal – from in-classroom training to vehicle-based technology like lane departure warning systems, anti-lock brakes and collision avoidance systems. However, it’s still likely that your managers lack the information they need to proactively identify risk and to get a clear picture of how your driver performed when critical safety situations occur on the road.
2. Protecting and building relationships with drivers
One of your most-experienced drivers was just in a collision and, according to eyewitnesses, he ran a red light. Are they right? If they are, you could lose one of your best drivers. When it comes to determining fault in a collision, truck drivers too often get the blame
3. Hauling too much data: bringing clarity to information overload
Over the past twenty years, vehicles have become increasingly sophisticated, outfitted with a variety of safety technologies that provide data about “critical” events – hard braking, lane departures, sudden acceleration, or deceleration, and more. Instead of providing better information about what happened, this data deluge has only confused the situation, leaving considerable room for doubt.
4. Resource magnifier: delivering a competitive edge
Keeping your fleet competitive requires continued focus on your resources, managing both overhead and technology investments. As fleets continue to expand, they must balance how to partner with drivers, dispatchers, and managers to grow together in a way that achieves safety goals without increasing cost. Video can be an important resource that helps facilitate a productive conversation between coach and driver by clearly showing what happened.
Running a construction or ready-mix fleet is no easy ride. Now, more than ever, fleets are focused on programs that measurably improve safety performance, while cost effectively managing their exposure to risk. With a video-based safety program, fleets are better able to protect drivers, lower risk and improve their bottom line – delivering an important and sustainable competitive advantage.
To learn more about adding a video-based safety program to your construction or ready-mix fleet management, visit Omnitracs.com.