What Is Your View Of Fleet Safety?

Many organizations employ large fleets of drivers for a variety of purposes, including sales, service, and maintenance. Some of the same organizations also have large groups of employees working with industrial equipment in a plant setting. However, they don't always view safety in the same way for their employees working in these very different environments.

Most companies devote significant resources to train plant workers in Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) procedures and to keep their facilities in compliance with OSHA regulations. Yet, the same company may send hundreds or thousands of employees out onto the road without providing fleet safety training or education. As compared to the highly regulated plant setting, these drivers venture out into an uncontrolled driving environment - one in which vehicle crashes are all-too-frequent.

By understanding the high incidence of fleet crashes and their subsequent results, safety directors will begin to see why they must take an active role in establishing a fleet safety culture within their organizations. This paper provides practical recommendations for developing a successful fleet safety culture that will yield a strong return on the organization's investment.

The Prevalence of Fleet Crashes

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in the U.S. a motor vehicle crash occurs every five seconds; an injury crash occurs every 10 seconds; and a fatal crash occurs every 13 minutes. For the average driver, the odds of being involved in a vehicle collision during a lifetime are 1 in 15.

These statistics reflect the frequency of vehicle crashes and the likelihood of involvement for the average driver: someone who drivers 10,000 - 12,000 miles annually. However, many fleet drivers travel 15,000 - 20,000 miles annually, or more. Even if they don't log high mileage (which is typically the case for drivers in urban territories), they do spend a good portion of their workday in the vehicle. As they tend to spend much more time on the road, fleet drivers face much greater exposure to crashes than drivers in the general public.

In fact, data analysis by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, has shown that fleet crashes cause more work-related deaths in the U.S. than any other single incident type. As illustrated in Exhibit 1, motor vehicle crashes were responsible for 31 percent of all worker fatalities in 2000 - causing nearly 1 in 3 work-related deaths. The next most frequent cause of worker fatalities - contact with objects and equipment - accounted for only about half as many fatalities.

Exhibit 1. A review of worker fatalities by incident type demonstrates that vehicle crashes were responsible for more deaths than any other category. (available in full paper)

Fleet vehicle crashes also play a leading role in the most costly worker injuries. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that the most expensive worker injury claims by far are attributable to fleet accidents, as Exhibit 2 shows on the following page.

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