Essential guide to road safety for businesses

9th April 2014

Brake, the road safety charity, is calling on small businesses with employees who drive for work to explore how they can cut costs and improve road safety, using its free comprehensive guide.

Preventing crashes, bumps and scrapes can deliver multiple business benefits like lowering insurance premiums, improving reputation and staff morale, and reducing lost time.  Indeed, at-work road crashes are estimated to cost UK employers £2.7 billion a year.  

The guide is published through Brake's Fleet Safety Forum with the support of the Department for Transport.  It outlines practical, low-cost steps small firms can take to save money, while protecting their employees and the wider community from the devastation a crash can cause.  It includes first steps in drawing up a policy and communicating safe driving messages to drivers, with sample policies and links to downloadable tools and further guidance.

It also contains case studies from organisations that have successfully reduced their road risk and benefitted their business as a result, and covers how to measure and benchmark fleet safety; gain senior buy-in; manage and reduce risk to drivers, vehicles, and journeys; and continually improve fleet safety.

“It can be daunting for smaller organisations to start putting in place effective fleet safety practices, but this guide sets out clearly where to begin and tried and tested methods,” Laura Woods, research and information officer at Brake, said.  “It also directs you to lots of useful tools available from Brake and other agencies.”

The guide can be downloaded from www.brakepro.org/assets/docs/practitioner-tools/fleet-guidance-14-SMEessentialguide-Mar.pdf