Road Safety Week 2023: Tool Box Talks and AI Driver Tracking

The 19^th of November marks the start of Road Safety Week, the yearly campaign from Brake advocating for safer roads and more mindful driving. At Lanes, we are committed to the safety and welfare of our employees, subcontractors, and the public, and have a large and diverse fleet to consider when we think about our safety initiatives and strategies.

We believe safety starts with awareness, so this year we want to take a look at what our fleet looks like and discuss some of the technology and training we utilise to help ensure that our drivers do their bit to keep UK roads safe.

Samsara Tracking

Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic this year and here at Lanes we certainly understand why. In October this year, we finished rolling out Samsara tracking across all our fleet vehicles, and the payoffs for safety have already been seen.

Samsara is an AI software that monitors and analyses driver behaviours, helping to identify unsafe or risky driving habits from harsh braking to excessively long driving sessions. This intelligent driver technology is helping Lanes to identify areas of improvement, support driver safety, and save money and time that can then be reinvested into company safety.

Since we began rolling our Samsara systems across our fleet, we have seen a significant reduction in insurance claims, and fewer 50/50 and driver-fault incidents. With the impacts on safety to be seen so soon after the introduction of Samsara, we have no doubts that the long-term benefits of Samsara for the safety of the public and our drivers are significant – a sentiment mirrored by Samsara, with Lanes now in the top 15% for global driving standards tracked by the software after just one year of use.

Tool Box Talks

Training and learning are a continuous process and one of the most vital ways we keep safety and correct procedure at the forefront of our team’s consideration is with regular Tool Box Talks.

These talks are designed to help introduce safety as something that should be part of everyday workplace conversation with informal discussion-style sessions focused on different safety issues. Our team operates a lot of heavy vehicles and plant, and with callouts across the country, we can often be found out on the road. By encouraging the discussion of the vital elements of workplace and road safety, these topics are reinforced within our team as part of the everyday and help to eliminate the risk of important checks, habits and behaviours being forgotten or missed.

These talks span a vast range of vehicle safety topics including mobile device and technology use, driver behaviour, driving hours, vehicle safety checks, and the highway code.

Lanes Fleet Vehicles

With a fleet the size of the one operated at Lanes, road safety is of the utmost importance. 200 cars, 2,000 vans and 800 HGVs make up the Lanes Group fleet and with national coverage, this means that Lanes drivers are out on roads across the UK at all times of day. With a road presence of that scale we believe we have a big responsibility to ensure that we bring no additional risk to the roads.

Technology like Samsara, and regular Tool Box Talks and other training opportunities work in conjunction with each other, giving our fleet managers the insights needed to identify areas requiring improvement and build training plans that directly target those areas, making meaningful differences.

We believe that cultivating a culture of driver safety is integral to operating an outstanding business, and we are committed to the safety and well-being of our drivers and staff. As we continue to utilise technology to our advantage and provide evolving training, we hope to see the positive impacts on our driver’s safety and responsibility increasingly evident.

Road Safety Week With Lanes

If you’d like to learn more about Road Safety Week, you can visit Brake’s official campaign website and you can read more about how Lanes is committed to-wide health and safety here. Here you will find details of the team members responsible for overseeing the upkeep of our high standards of health and safety, keeping our team safe on and off-site and out on the roads.