How to Conduct a Fleet Risk Assessment

Fleet Risk Assessment: Fleet management can draw a lot of money from the pockets of owners if there are no continuous risk assessments. A single threat or a risk in your fleet can lead to damage or an accident, causing you some sort of loss of money.

Many factors like wear and tear of the fleets, bad tires, used up engines, bad driving practices and much more can cost you a lot if left unchecked. These all costs and many losses can be reduced by conducting an advanced fleet risk assessment. In this guide, we have shared with you the  A to Z of conducting a fleet risk assessment.

What Does Fleet Risk Management Means

The practice of ensuring that your fleets are using the standards of utmost safety to stop any kind of system malfunction or human error that may result in an accident is call Fleet Risk Management

It includes close observation, analysis, and monitoring of driver’s behavior to analyze the risk patterns and much more. These days many advanced technologies and gadgets like dash cams, GPS, AI, Route Optimization Software, Fleet Management Software, Fuel Management System, and much more can help in better analysis of risk in fleets.

What are the reasons to Conduct a Fleet Risk Assessment

Some of the reasons to conduct a fleet risk assessment are as follows–

• It brings a sense of security to the minds of many employees and helps them to deliver more in each endeavor.
• There are huge discounts offered by insurance companies to fleets that are more secured and runs fleet risk assessment tests.
• It can cut down a huge cost by preventing many accidents and other damages 
• Increases the overall efficiency of the fleet and improves productivity.

Also Read: Why Should You Include Social Media Marketing and SEO in Your Strategy?

Conducting  Fleet Risk Assessment

Now the first step is to look for the potential risks that can arise in your fleets. The first and foremost thing is to manage the driver’s behavior and the quality of driving.

Managing the Quality of Driving

One of the most problematic things that lead to accidents and losses is bad driving skills or careless behavior from the fleet’s driver. 

There are many things that should be monitored. One of the first things is driving lazily or when feeling sleepy. Many drivers follow this practice often to meet the deadline or they are habitual or drowsy driving. Drowsy driving is one of the major causes of accidents with a fatality.

Apart from driving lazily or while feeling sleepy some other things that need to be assisted or eliminated to reduce the risk are-

• The speed limit is a major concern as many drivers drive fleets at very high speed that are a big reason for many accidents.
• Using hard breaks is another reason that can cause accidents and damages to the fleets.
• Inappropriate reporting from the driver or false information sometimes can cause a lot of loss and damage.
• Even the bad practices of extracting oil, driving too slow, sleeping at eateries and much more can disrupt the schedules and timings of the fleets.

Assessing and reducing the risks

These are the major risks that we need to assess and then reduce to a minimum. At present programs like Route Optimization Software, Fleet Management Software, Fuel Management System helps in mitigating these risks to a bare minimum.

Using a  Fleet Management Software 

Fleet management software can help in managing everything and keeping the information at your fingertips to manage things. Using programs like telematics can reduce the risk by providing real-time data about the driver’s behavior. This helps in eliminating the risk of accidents and other dangers while driving.

Using dashcams in your fleets

Another thing that every fleet should have installed for better risk assessment is a dashcam with GPS. At present time dashcams are equipped with modern tools like AI and GPS. They can easily notice bad driving, high speed, lazy behavior, and much more. The AI can notify the driver in real-time and send information to the manager. A dashcam is a wonderful tool used to assess and eliminate risk in fleets. 

Keeping a check on the fuel

It is highly important to keep a check on the fuel activity and the fuel volumes of your fleets to eliminate any foul play from the driver. Many drivers extract extra fuel from the vehicle to earn profit. This can be prevented by using Fuel Management System. This system helps in keeping track of all fuel expenditure by assessing the mileage and fuel capacity.

Keep your fleets in good condition

Another thing that should be kept in mind is to keep everything in your fleet up to date. Regular servicing of fleets can prevent much wear and tear saving a lot of money. Highly serviced fleets can perform better as compared to non-serviced fleets.

Summing it up

Fleet risk assessment is a crucial step to cut down many losses and reduce the number of accidents. It not only saves a lot of money but can save human life as well. It is advised to run a fleet risk assessment on a frequent basis for optimum performance of your fleets.