Rethinking Road Safety – Part 1

Vehicle performance versus driver performance. Have we got the focus wrong?

Human error is a factor in 95% of all road accidents, but a higher percentage of resource goes on vehicle roadworthiness and improved vehicle construction, despite the fact that vehicle defects are a factor in only 2.8 per cent of fatal road accidents.

A cultural shift in the focus of road safety is needed, with fleet operators adopting a more driver behaviour focused safety ethos.

"It's not your vehicle or the road conditions that are most likely to kill you. It's your own driving."

Monitoring and improving driver performance when embedded in a safety culture that places greater or at least equal emphasis on driver performance as is does on vehicle condition, has the potential to greatly reduce human error and therefore greatly reduce the number of road accidents.

Research indicates that there are currently around five deaths and 65 serious injuries on UK roads every day at an annual cost of £32 billion.

The commercial fleet industry, working together with technology/software providers, can help prevent these needless casualties by making a driver behaviour focused safety culture a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) priority.

In recent years, the automotive industry has invested most of its energy into building vehicles that are safer to drive and protect passengers in the event of a crash. The next evolution will focus on preventing crashes from happening.

The human factor is a key element of crashes and we need to place the emphasis on monitoring and improving driver behaviour in order to eliminate 'at risk' activity.

"We may then see a reduction in the so called 'Big Three' incident types, which include rear-end collisions, intersection crashes and lane change/merge collisions.