29 Mar What makes an “unsafe behaviour” behind the wheel

Unsafe Behaviours, known as “Coachable” behaviours in the DriveCam platform are behaviours which require attention however are unlikely to actually cause a collision.  A great example of this is the most prevalent behaviour in the risk report – not wearing a seat belt.

Not wearing a seat belt will not actually CAUSE a collision, however, is obviously illegal and against company policy and clearly very dangerous for the driver should a collision actually occur.

Even in 2021, we are completely staggered at the amount of drivers who do NOT wear seat belts whilst driving – close to 50% of truck drivers are not wearing seat belts!!!!

Another good example of an unsafe or coachable behaviour is smoking, whilst it may be legal to smoke in a vehicle, very often it is against company policy, especially in the dangerous goods sector.  Unbelievably, we still see drivers carrying fuel or other flammable goods and smoking whilst driving.

Whilst the DriveCam Safety Program risk assesses every single trip and applies a risk score to every single trip, the vast majority of risk assessed events have a risk score of 0 – that is no collision leading behaviour is evident.  That is , either there is no bad behaviours at all, or a coachable behaviour has been identified.

The DriveRisk team is often called upon to review a company’s driver and vehicle policy early on in the deployment.  We often see company policies which state something like “using the mobile phone whilst driving is instant dismissal,” which is fine when 99% of businesses can not measure this behaviour, however as DriveCam can measure dozens of behaviours, it sometimes turns out that 30% or 40% of your drivers are texting and driving….

We then help our clients design an escalation matrix in conjunction with an incentive program for their drivers.

Want to know more? Get in touch with our team