Does Anyone Respond to the “How’s My Driving” Bumper Sticker?

I’ve been on the phone constantly this morning to complain about emails disappearing and files being corrupted on my PC. As you can imagine, I was very annoyed and left the office during lunchtime to let off some steam at the gym.

Having had a good workout and feeling less stressed, I returned back to the office hoping all had been resolved. During my journey, I read a slogan on the back of a van asking – Am I Driving Safely?

This got me thinking… has anyone actually rung up a company to say, “I saw one of your vans at about 2pm driving along in front of me and I just thought I’d give you a quick ring to say that it was being driven perfectly. Well done!”

Somehow, I very much doubt it.

I have to admit, I’ve never phoned up my IT Manager to compliment her on how fantastically my computer has been working – have you?

So how can business and fleet owners know how well their vehicles are being driven?  More to the point, how can they positively encourage staff to maintain a high standard of driving?

We all know that they’re not going to get positive feedback from the public, just irate complaints.

Here’s the answer… a recent enhancement to the FleetMatics fleet management solution is the addition of the Driving Style tool, which monitors acceleration, cornering and braking styles – key indicators for recognising aggressive or unsafe driving.

Having this valuable information allows fleet owners to keep an eye on driving style and, by setting up a league table, reward top drivers to help create positive attitudes towards safer driving.

Having a positive driving style strategy encourages drivers to be more considerate of saving on fuel, and helping reduce accidents. Another important aspect is that, should there ever be an incident, the data can be retrieved along with location, time and speed for use as evidence. Now that’s progress!

I’m sure my IT manager uses some sort of monitoring tools for her network and therefore doesn’t need the random praise of her users – and with that thought I now don’t feel quite so guilty.