Driving for Better Business champion Hermes saves £1m

Hermes’ combined car, van and HGV fleet has seen £1 million in cost savings in the past 12 months after introducing a range of safe driving measures.

The catalyst for the financial savings and a string of other employee health and safety benefits is the Hermes Driving School, which ensures the company’s 480 employed drivers and 163 agency drivers meet its industry-leading safe driving standards.

The focus on safe-driving in 2009/10 when compared with 2008/9 saw a:

• 109% improvement in accident-free days per vehicle from 216 to 434 days, resulting in significant reductions in vehicle downtime and the cost of vehicle replacement
• 47% improvement in the accident rate – including bumps and scratches – per vehicle from 1.44 to 0.75
• 41.8% reduction in the number of recorded accidents from 620 to 361 across the commercial vehicle fleet
• 33.5% (£240,000) cut in the cost of incidents
• The reduction in the number of vehicle-related crashes and their severity was recorded against a background of the size of the light goods vehicle and HGV fleet increasing 11% from 430 vehicles to 479 and the number of days of vehicle use rising 16.9% from 134,160 to 156,775.

In addition to the commercial vehicle fleet, Hermes also operates 183 company cars.

Simultaneously, the number of insurance claims related to vehicle damage has fallen by 60% and insurance premiums for the business dropped 10% in the last 10 months.

It is that focus on safety through the driving school, which was opened in 2004, and the subsequent reduction in vehicle-related crashes and resulting financial savings that has seen Hermes receive ‘business champion’ status from the Government-backed ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign, which is managed by RoadSafe.