Are You Tracking Vehicle Speed?

Mobile workers tend to be under time-pressure in order to meet deadlines, keep to schedules or hit sales targets. And often, because of this, they speed between appointments.

Now, it’s not news to say that speeding is dangerous. It makes collisions worse, gives the driver less time to react, and reduces control of the vehicle. Around 80 people are killed every month when driving for work, and another 1000 are injured. Plus, the tendency to speed tends to increase the chances an individual will drive unsafely in other ways – by driving too close to the car in front, using their phone, or continuing to drive when tired.

Furthermore, speeding has a direct impact on the bottom line of organisations with a fleet of vehicles. Speeding, braking hard and stopping and starting all increase fuel consumption dramatically and accelerate the wear and tear on the vehicle – and statistics show that fuel and maintenance come to 30% of the cost of ownership of a car over five years.

The UK government has put focus on helping businesses keep their mobile workers from driving too fast – but competitive necessity, both within the workforce and for the business itself, makes it difficult to achieve in practice.

Currently, only around a third of small fleets monitor the speed of their vehicles at all but there is technology available to help. Some systems not only feed information back to fleet managers, but provide a real-time analysis to the driver themselves about their speed, braking and cornering. That means, rather than be faced with a damning report at the end of the month, a driver can react to immediate automatic feed-back and modify their habits accordingly.

For the organisation, this means less likelihood of accidents, lower fuel and maintenance costs and better insurance premiums. It also means less need for direct man management of drivers.

If you’d like to know more about how technology can help you manage the challenges facing you today, get in touch to find out about our range of state-of-the-art telematics products.

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