Work related road safety leadership case study: BT halves collision rate and cuts costs by £10+ million per annum

25 March 2010

BT, which operates one of the largest motor fleets in Europe, has recently revised and updated its occupational road risk policy and programs – in part to allow for improved privacy management and detailed data integration through its DriverINDEX and risk data-warehouse.

To date the company has cut its collision rate from approximately 60 per thousand vehicles in 2001 to 30 in 2009, reducing costs by in the region of £12 million per annum in the process. This has been achieved through a range of initiatives including:

• Policy and communications based on the latest research from around the globe.
• Management leadership and engagement.
• Europe’s biggest ever driver risk assessment, monitoring and improvement program touching over 65,000 people.
• Improved vehicle selection and management.
• Effective journey planning and management.
• Community engagement through its Family and Friends road safety initiative.
• Thought leadership though participation in fleet safety benchmarking, government initiatives, industry events and good practice programs such as Driving for Better Business and the NIOSH global road safety for workers project.

Tony Holt, BT’s Travel Safety Subject Matter Expert said:

‘We have made great improvements in our fleet safety performance over the last eight years as a result of this program. In the past 12 months the collision rate reduction has reached a plateau, which has led us to further enhance our program through the ongoing development of our risk data-warehouse which has been run and managed by Interactive Driving Systems for the past 8 years. Improved collision data, DriverINDEX, OneToOne and a renewed push on our Starting Point driver risk assessment, monitoring and improvement project are all key elements of the program.’

BT is now in the process of re-launching its road safety program, with a new improved MIS, an upgraded online OneToOne process for line and safety managers, and several revised and updated risk assessment, monitoring and improvement modules for drivers.

Detailed case studies of BT’s program can be seen at www.fleetsafetybenchmarking.net, www.virtualriskmanager.net (see NIOSH, cases and awards) and the Driving for Better Business website.

PhD and other research involving Edinburgh Napier and Loughborough Universities is also ongoing to further evaluate and enhance the program. To date 4 research papers have been published and two further ones are in process.