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FUNDAMENTALS OF \ SAFETY
How can fleets create a culture of safe driving – and what tools are available to support them?
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Employers have a legally enforced duty of care to ensure they provide a safe working environment, with obligations covering risk management, training and staff welfare. And those responsibilities also apply when employees are on the road, even if they’re driving their own vehicles.
The Health and Safety Executive identifies driving for work as one of the most dangerous activities employees can undertake, and the stakes are high. Human effects aside, the Department for Transport reports an average per-casualty cost of £99,048, rising to £2.4m per fatality, while Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles claims vehicle downtime can cost £550 per day. Those figures make risk management an important investment for fleets.
DRIVER AND VEHICLE CHECKS
Risk management begins with recruitment. According to the latest government data, there were three million drivers with at least three penalty points on their licence in May 2025. Among them, 112,547 have nine points – which means they are only one offence away from disqualification.
Regular licence checks ensure drivers are legally allowed on the road and provide a record of recent behaviour. The Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) requires six-monthly checks for accredited members. Employers using ‘grey fleet’ vehicles should extend those checks to ensure private cars and vans are roadworthy and adequately insured for business use.
TELEMATICS AND ROUTE OPTIMISATION
As an employer, you can’t track what you can’t measure. A telematics solution can help identify aggressive driving, which leads to increased wear, fuel consumption and risk, then suggest targeted training for employees. It can also be used to ‘gamify’ driving, by rewarding employees who are safest at the wheel.
Telematics can also enable route optimisation, by highlighting delay-prone areas and ensuring drivers have adequate time to complete their duties within working hours. According to the latest government data, 18% of collisions that resulted in injury or death were caused by a driver being careless, reckless or in a hurry.
DRIVER RESPONSIBILITIES
Remote working has become increasingly common since the Covid-19 pandemic. Office for National Statistics data shows half of employed workers spend some or all of their working lives at home, while 15% never visit a set workplace. The DVSA stresses that drivers are legally responsible for ensuring vehicles are safe and road legal – with unlimited fines and prison sentences for using vans in a dangerous condition.
This needn’t be a burden. Detailed checklists are available on the DVSA’s website, and employers should put a process in place to report issues and book repairs. Workshop lead times have increased since the pandemic – from just under 11 days in February 2020 to more than 13 in March 2025, according to Epyx. Besides ensuring safer driving, faults can cause unplanned downtime, including the vehicle being prohibited from use if they are identified during a DVSA or police spot check.
TELEMATICS AND ROUTE OPTIMISATION
As an employer, you can’t track what you can’t measure. A telematics solution can help identify aggressive driving, which leads to increased wear, fuel consumption and risk, then suggest targeted training for employees. It can also be used to ‘gamify’ driving, by rewarding employees who are safest at the wheel.
Telematics can also enable route optimisation, by highlighting delay-prone areas and ensuring drivers have adequate time to complete their duties within working hours. According to the latest Government data, 18% of collisions that resulted in injury or death were caused by a driver being careless, reckless or in a hurry.
DRIVER RESPONSIBILITIES
Remote working has become increasingly common since the Covid-19 pandemic. Office for National Statistics data shows half of employed workers spend some or all of their working lives at home, while 15% never visit a set workplace. The DVSA stresses that drivers are legally responsible for ensuring vehicles are safe and road legal – with unlimited fines and prison sentences for using vans in a dangerous condition.
This needn’t be a burden. Detailed checklists are available on the DVSA’s website, and employers should put a process in place to report issues and book repairs. Workshop lead times have increased since the pandemic – from just under 11 days in February 2020 to more than 13 in March 2025, according to Epyx. Besides ensuring safer driving, faults can cause unplanned downtime, including the vehicle being prohibited from use if they are identified during a DVSA or police spot check.
DISTRACTED DRIVING
The latest Department for Transport data shows one in six (17%) collisions involved a distracted or impaired driver. Although alcohol was the biggest contributory factor in that group (37%), a fifth (21%) involved a driver being distracted by something inside the vehicle and 4% specifically identifying use of a mobile phone.
The Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP) has issued guidance to help members create drink- and drug-driving policies for drivers, including reporting any medication that can cause drowsiness. Policies should also stress the importance of not handling devices such as mobile phones or tablets while driving – a cause of 15,300 prosecutions in 2023. Drivers can receive six penalty points and fines of up to £1,000 if they are caught.
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Fleet safety must evolve from a reactive to a proactive stance. For too long, the focus has been on what happened after a collision. We believe true safety lies in preventing incidents before they occur, addressing both driver behaviour and vehicle health.
This requires moving beyond simple alerts to deep, predictive insights. The Geotab Safety Center provides this foundation, offering tools such as AI-powered Driver Risk Insights to identify and coach at-risk behaviours at the individual driver level. This is paired with programmes such as Geotab Vitality, which uses positive reinforcement to build a lasting safety culture. By focusing on prevention, we help fleets reduce risk, lower costs and, most importantly, protect their drivers.
Oliver Holt Sales manager, Geotab
