Road Safety Week: Underlining Lanes’ commitment to safe driving

At Lanes Group, one of our most important commitments involves ensuring we have taken every necessary step to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of all of our employees and subcontractors, as well as members of the public affected by our work. This applies to all of the engineering and maintenance work we undertake involving pipes and sewers, but equally extends to the key issue of road safety and vehicle maintenance.

Lanes’ nationwide team spends a significant amount of time driving and operating vehicles, plant and equipment across the UK, with an extensive and diverse fleet of over 2,000 vehicles and assets, ranging from light commercial vehicles to heavy-duty tankers. As such, we have a responsibility to make sure that we are always looking out for the safety of our staff, customers and other road users, no matter what kind of work we are carrying out.

To coincide with Road Safety Week, we are detailing some of the most important policies, provisions and protections we have implemented to ensure that we are able to hold ourselves to the very highest standards of road safety.

Our road safety policies

When members of the Lanes team get behind the wheel of one of our distinctive fleet of vehicles, they will be well-briefed on the various safety protocols and policies we have in place to make sure that everyone is kept safe while out on the roads.

These include:

• Carrying out daily checks to ensure that vehicles are kept in a safe and roadworthy condition, including checking on the condition of tyres, lights, mirrors, oil levels and other equipment
• Maintaining rigorous professional standards when hiring new drivers, including thorough reviews of their professional credentials and any potential health and eyesight conditions that could affect their ability to drive
• Strictly enforcing driving hours policies to ensure that staff are not spending longer on the roads without proper rest than is safe and legal
• Prohibiting the use of mobile devices by any authorised driver while a company vehicle is in use, including hands-free technology
• Treating any road safety offences that occur behind the wheel of a Lanes vehicle as a potentially serious disciplinary matter
• Providing clear written guidance for all employees on their legal and moral responsibilities while operating motor vehicles and equipments

Our road safety technology and investments

In order to make it easier for our staff to maintain a high standard of road safety, our vehicles are fitted with sophisticated road safety technologies and systems. These allow us to monitor driver behaviour, while providing them with crucial information to help them stay safe.

Our vehicle telematics and safety tracking systems allow us to monitor all of our vehicles in real time, 24 hours a day, offering the following functions:

• Driver behaviour tracking and monitoring, identifying incidents such as speeding, harsh braking, idling and improper cornering, and allowing the Lanes team to monitor trends and provide feedback over time
• Driver improvement coaching tools, using real video footage from harsh events
• Live alerts when a driver is distracted
• Seatbelt alerts for drivers
• Vehicle collision warnings and live accident notifications
• Facial recognition technology
• Live vehicle diagnostic/maintenance alerts and defect reporting

In addition, we have fitted our commercial vehicles with reversing cameras or reversing sensors, which must be used at all times to ensure the area that large vehicles are reversing into are clear of obstacles.

A culture of safety and care

Above all, working as a driver at Lanes means buying into a workplace culture where health and safety are valued highly, and every member of the team is equally committed to the principle of getting everyone home safe, every single day.

This working culture is exemplified in the following ways:

• Educating our staff on the importance of proper rest, and of the risks associated with driver fatigue – a contributory factor in up to 20% of road incidents
• Ensuring that vehicles are parked considerately and in full compliance with the Highway Code, to avoid highway safety concerns or inconvenience for other property owners or road users
• Teaching drivers about the specific risks associated with driving on rural roads – a common requirement given Lanes’ commitment to serving clients in even the most remote locations
• Making sure that our drivers recognise their roles as ambassadors of Lanes Group while they are behind the wheel of our vehicles
• Emphasising the importance of driving in a courteous and respectful manner at all times

Find out more

If you’d like to learn more about Road Safety Week, you can visit Brake’s official campaign website. You can also find out more about Lanes’ company-wide health and safety commitments here, including details on the members of our team who are responsible for overseeing our efforts to keep every Lanes employee safe, whether on-site or out on the roads.