Is Sanitizing Your Fleet Vehicles Enough to Protect Your Drivers?
AUGUST 11, 2020 // JEFF VARICK
Suddenly we find ourselves living in a world where everyone is concerned about protection and safety. You’re probably thinking on a whole new level about your vehicles, the people who drive them, and how to keep them safe. You’re probably also dealing with questions like these:
- Are we sanitizing our vehicles properly?
- What do we truly need to do to protect our drivers’ health?
- What are the regional COVID-19 regulations where our drivers are traveling?
A great place to start is Brandmotion Solutions’ industry-leading vehicle sanitization protocol. These are important questions, but they’re just the start. When it comes to the health of your drivers, the coronavirus is only one aspect of a holistic safety perspective. It’s important not only to develop an approach to protect your people from COVID-19, but from all other dangers on the road as well. Safety is more encompassing than merely sanitizing your seats and steering wheels. It includes protecting your employees from collisions and distracted driving. In today’s world, safety means doing everything you can to keep your drivers and your equipment safe, and that includes avoiding collisions.
Welcome to the Age of Safety
We’re in a new world, and you’ve got to up your safety game. Everyone’s talking about it, and undoubtedly your stakeholders, shareholders, and executives have a heightened interest in keeping your employees safe and protected. If you haven’t done it yet, now is the best time to develop an overarching safety program for your fleet. One important aspect of any safety program is the safety technology you use. At a minimum, consider including backup cameras, dash cams, and blindspot protections. Even your older fleet vehicles should include these technologies. Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) aren’t just nice-to-have equipment anymore. Study after study has proven the collision reduction effectiveness of emerging ADAS technology. For example:
- Forward collision warning reduced front-to-rear crashes by 27 percent
- Blind spot detection yielded a 14 percent drop in lane-change crashes
- Rear cross-traffic alerts reduced backing crashes by 22 percent
- Lane departure warning resulted in 11 percent fewer single-vehicle, sideswipe and head-on crashes
- Rearview cameras dropped backing crashes by 17 percent
- Parking sensors reduced rear crashes by 18%, but in conjunction with a rearview camera, they reduced crashes by an impressive 38%.
Blind spot warning and rear cross traffic alert have the highest satisfaction and perceived benefit among drivers. Consumer Reports recommends them for every vehicle. It’s hard to argue with the numbers. But not every fleet manager is investing in ADAS equipment for their drivers.
Is Safety Too Costly?
Many fleet managers take a pass on ramping up the safety of their fleet vehicles. They think that getting ADAS equipment means purchasing new vehicles or buying clunky aftermarket components. The truth is, you can get OEM-quality ADAS technologies that are seamlessly integrated into the fleet vehicles you’re already operating. Brandmotion supplies retrofit technology that rivals factory equipment. Our technologies are just as accurate as factory-installed ADAS equipment, but they’re more affordable: you don’t have to buy a vehicle with a high trim level. They’re also easier to keep calibrated. Lower crash rates are a clear benefit of these technologies, but collisions can still occur. In that case, Brandmotion gives you a further advantage: repairing vehicles with our safety equipment is less expensive than with factory-installed components. If your vehicle is involved in a collision, not only do you need to repair the body, but you have to recalibrate the advanced driver assistance system that has sensors in the windshield. That can be very expensive. Our products are easy to self-calibrate, which means you don’t have to go to pay a dealership to do it for you.
How to Get Started
Equipping your fleet with the right safety technologies depends on making informed decisions. Brandmotion can walk you through your choices and help you custom-tailor a program that fits your needs. We’re vehicle experts with decades of deep experience in the auto industry. No matter what you’re driving in your fleet, we know exactly what can (and can’t) be added to your vehicles to get the greatest results. As consultants, we can educate you with government studies that recommend various technologies for particular scenarios. We can also help with ROI calculations and cost/benefit analysis. When you’re ready, our Brandmotion Solutions group can install the equipment and train your drivers how to use it. Brandmotion commonly trains and certifies installers during our retrofit deployments, so your fleet develops your workforce at the same time you develop your infrastructure. This makes a fleet truly smart!
Don’t Wait to Play It Safe
As safety awareness skyrockets, it’s the responsibility of every fleet manager to make sure your vehicles are properly sanitized from the coronavirus. But safety only begins there — and more than ever, organizations need to take the next step to protect their drivers on the road. Let’s start the conversation about what the right safety program looks like for your fleet.
