There are many factors to consider that can reduce the likelihood of car accidents that can affect your employees. Here are some tips to help you achieve this goal:

Involve your Employees Through Building Awareness

Driving to work can be the most dangerous activity your employees will have to do, and it contributes to more accidental fatalities or serious injuries than any other work activity. A motor vehicle accident can therefore directly impact your business operations, which is why you should highlight the benefits of developing a risk management strategy on the road.

Road Accidents Can Lead To:

• An increase in your business’s insurance costs.
• The temporary or permanent loss of use of your vehicles.
• Decreased business productivity.
• Sick leave for employees injured in car accidents.
• Unrealized business sales.
• Loss or damage of business inventory

Generating the interest of your employees from the highest level of your business downwards will make it easier for you to implement the next steps in your road accident reduction strategy.

Prepare a Road Safety Awareness Policy for Your Employees

If your employees are required to drive as part of their job, you should write a road safety awareness policy for them to follow. This policy should relate to your motor vehicles, the drivers, and how they are to be used safely and of course efficiently. The language in the policy needs to be in plain English and direct so that the objectives of the policy are well targeted, with relevant emphasis appropriately placed on how these objectives are to be achieved so as to reduce car accidents and injuries. Your Road Safety Awareness Policy will be the cornerstone of your risk reduction policy and must be accessible to all employees and available at appropriate and convenient locations throughout the workplace.

The Categories of Objectives to Address in Your Road Safety Awareness Policy Include:

• The personal responsibilities of each employee category.
• The dangers of driving distracted by the telephone and other electronic devices.
• Strict prohibition of driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
• Appropriate driver behaviour.
• The importance of preplanning your route to achieve efficiency and a safer drive.
• The need to check weather conditions and plan trips with road conditions in mind.
• The need to ensure the health and wellbeing of employees who spend a long time on the road.
• The procedures to be followed in emergency situations.
• First Aid training requirements.

Maintaining Appropriate Incident Reports and Records to be Used for Future Risk Management

In order to reduce the rate of car accidents and injuries, you must be aware of all the events that have affected your employees on the road.

Every motor vehicle accident that has taken place should be recorded and listed – not only with insurance details but also the nature of the route that the employee driver used, the duration of the journey and of course whether the relevant motor vehicle has been inspected recently along with details of any maintenance issues.

For some businesses, the best practice to follow is to ask the employee driver to provide details of the car accident directly to management after the car accident. A system should be developed to accurately and efficiently record relevant information so that statistics can easily be reported.

If an employee suffers a car accident injury they should consult the best available car accident lawyer Perth.

Review the Processes and Safety Record of Other Similar Businesses

In order to assess your car accident minimisation strategy, you should compare your business’s risk management and car accident safety record date to other similar businesses in your relevant area.

This will allow you to assess how well your business doing relevant to other businesses in your industry and learn ways in which your business can improve to better its systems and thereby increase the safety of its employees.

The Importance of Keeping Your Employee Drivers Informed

Your motor vehicle accident reduction strategy can never work without the commitment of your drivers. Your drivers need to be appropriately trained and made well aware of what you are trying to accomplish with your strategy and how you want them to assist in achieving the relevant goals. In order to assist them understand their role in the strategy you should advise them on:

• How they should behave when driving.
• The requirements for regular motor vehicle inspections.
• How to act and the process to follow when a car accident or other relevant emergency occurs on the road.
• The consequences such as penalties etcetera that will flow to the employees if the business’s policies are not complied with

Maintain regular communication with your business’s employees from management level downwards to ensure safety is at the forefront of every employee’s mind when operating a motor vehicle.  Also conduct tests and evaluations to ensure that every employee is sufficiently fit and healthy to be operating a motor vehicle.  Random drug and alcohol testing must be conducted at unexpected intervals

Evaluate the Skills of your Drivers

All employee drivers need to be monitored and assessed on a regular basis. At the very least, this includes a check of their driver’s licence, the health and physical condition of each employee driver.  Annual eyesight tests should be mandatory to ensure driver safety.  The practical driving skills and on road behaviour of each employee should regularly be assessed and graded to ensure the highest standard is maintained.

Such assessments as those discussed above should be repeated after each car accident. If there are any doubts about the fitness or ability to drive of any of particular employee, they should be prohibited from driving until all concerns have been investigated and resolved.

Drugs and Alcohol Prohibition Policy

All employee drivers should be told that complete compliance with the law on driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs is mandatory. A zero-tolerance policy should be put in place meaning that any employee found to be driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol is immediately terminated. Employee drivers should be required to execute a written undertaking in which they declare that they will under no circumstances drive under the influence drugs and which acknowledges that their employment will be terminated should they breach the undertaking.

Foster a Road Safety Business Culture

It is imperative that all employees at all levels of your business are aware of the importance and seriousness of road safety. The key to ensuring this is through regular training for all employees, communication, monitoring and rewarding those who exhibit exemplary driving.  This will go a long way to keeping your employees safe and reducing car accident injuries and property damage.