You might be confident in your fleet employees. They might be perfectly capable drivers, with seemingly no issues handling themselves and their vehicles on the road.

But when you’re faced with constant downtime, rising insurance premiums, and a ballooning budget for vehicle repair and maintenance, something needs to change. What is the right course of action? It may simply be driver training.

In this blog we look at the signs that you can look out for, that may indicate that your fleet is in need of driver training.

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Driver training can help your mobile workforce in a number of ways. To name a few, it can make your drivers more aware and in-tune with the performance of their vehicles, so that they report problems early before repair costs skyrocket. Training also teaches drivers about risky road behaviours and how to stop them, which will lower the chance of costly accidents.

Driver training is one of the most effective ways to lower overall fleet risk. To know when it’s necessary, here are the 4 major signs to be on the lookout for.

Downtime

When fleet vehicles are down, the business can’t function as usual. That, of course, can truly hurt your company’s bottom line.

By addressing the causes of vehicle wear and tear with your drivers, and using driver training to teach better vehicle handling, your vehicles will be running more often, meaning fewer revenue-draining holes in day-to-day operations.

Driver training teaches your mobile workforce how to operate their vehicles with minimal impact to tires, engines, and other critical components. This helps prevent even minor damage from occurring and can sometimes reduce your maintenance bills straight away.

Fuel consumption

When you notice fuel expenses going up, it could be yet another result of the way employees are driving.

Suddenly accelerating or stopping, driving without first warming up the engine, and idling are just some of the things that result in wasted fuel. And that ends up being a source of unnecessary costs.

Teaching drivers to handle vehicles more carefully will improve fuel economy, resulting in fewer trips to the petrol station.

Insurance premiums

It’s plain and simple: when accidents happen, insurance premiums rise. The best defence is to circumvent accidents from the get-go.

A comprehensive driver training programme will teach proper defensive driving techniques, and the finer points of safely navigating bad weather and congested roads. It can also reinforce your drivers’ environmental awareness (for example, to notice when other motorists are impaired) and sense of personal responsibility in avoiding crashes.

Keeping drivers on top of their safe driving game will lessen the risk of accidents, which will keep insurance premiums at a minimum.

Bad habits

Have you gotten reports of bad road behaviour? Then it’s time to consider training.

Bad habits can easily be absorbed from other drivers and become ingrained, even and especially in the most ‘experienced’ drivers. It is a major source of risk for a company that depends on a fleet for its daily business.

Things such as speeding, inattention, ‘road rage’ behaviours, or even bad ergonomics in the driver’s seat can make the road less safe for everyone and can even cause crashes.

Driver training can give drivers that are most at-risk in those areas the remedial instruction they need. Your staff will reach their destinations with greater care for the vehicle, and more attention to smooth, judicious driving. This creates a difference that speaks volumes for your brand, and one that others on the road will notice.

The riskiest facets of your fleet are only obvious when you know what to look for, and you can only correct them when you know how. By taking note of increased downtime, fuel usage, insurance premiums, or bad driver behaviour, you’ll know it’s time to consider driver training... for the sake of your budget and the whole company.

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