Complying with health and safety rules should be top of mind when you have a fleet to supervise. With the responsibility of keeping your drivers safe, you are likely imagining every way possible to reduce road accidents.

One of the best ways to keep in line with the law — and lessen your worries about impending crashes — is to put a safe driving policy in effect. Mobile phones in particular are a major cause of accidents. For that reason, any driving policy you develop needs to cover how drivers should approach texting or calling. 

In this blog, we talk about a few essential items to put into your policy to keep your drivers focused on making safe journeys.
 

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What the law says about mobile phone usage while driving

The law sets out some strict guidelines for phone usage while driving because of the perils that even momentary distractions create. Just over one second of diverted attention, according to some studies, can lead to a major crash.

In New Zealand, the law prohibits the usage of a handheld mobile device while driving. A driver can only operate a phone if it's completely voice-activated (meaning, no touch is needed to make or answer calls) or if the phone is mounted and the driver very quickly operates it by hand. 

While these rules help, fleet accidents can present severe costs and liabilities to a business. So for a mobile workforce, safe driving rules should be even stricter to eliminate as many crashes as humanly possible.

Here are some ways to encourage the highest degree of road safety, and key rules to add to your driving policy:

Key points for minimising phone distractions behind the wheel

1. Look at a digital map before setting out, if unsure of locations or directions.

The creation of advanced apps like Google Maps make planning any trip much easier and should be implemented to help navigate to each destination. This is especially important for drivers to do before taking off if they have doubts about where to go or how to get there.

Confidence in a route can help drivers stay focused on reaching their destinations safely. 

2. Keep mobile phones turned off while driving, whenever possible.

The very best way to cut off distracting ringtones or text notifications, isn't to put the phone on silent, it's turning them off completely while driving. 

Noisy beeps or vibrations can easily divert a driver’s attention from the road. It can be very tempting to make quick calls or send short texts when only a few button presses are needed. Mandating that phones stay off will help eliminate both possibilities.

3. If drivers must be reachable on the road, use only the hands-free phone equipped with the vehicle and keep calls to a minimum.

For some businesses, it’s crucial that drivers are able to communicate with other staff while behind the wheel. If this is the case for your company, you should provide hands-free phones for all fleet vehicles, and instruct drivers to only use voice-activation features.

In addition, you should allow drivers to only make or answer calls when absolutely necessary, and to always pull over to a safe spot first. This guarantees that work-related calls don’t happen in the midst of moving traffic, endangering your drivers and those sharing the road with them.

No aspect of driver safety should be taken for granted but especially not mobile phone usage. By taking the time to develop and enforce a texting and calling policy for your fleet drivers, you’ll be doing a lot to stay compliant with H&S laws while keeping your drivers out of harm’s way. 

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