It’s a good feeling, to be just you and the open road without another soul for miles. In Australia, we have ample rural roads that stretch as far as the eye can see, but they can be treacherous. According to one study (sourced from this paper), between 2016 and 2019, rural roads in Australia saw 3,739 fatal accidents, which equates to 14 fatal accidents per week. These numbers are concerning, especially when you operate a business that consistently has workers driving long distances through regional areas.
At Blackwoods, we service industries all across Australia, which means many of our professional service people spend time travelling long distances in adverse weather and at times travel on unsealed roads. And if we’re going to preach safety, we have to practice it. That’s why we launched our DriveSAFE project to keep Blackwoods and sister company Bullivants drivers, safer on the road.
One aspect of the project was to upskill our drivers. We enlisted the services of Performance Driving Australia to conduct training over two days in Queensland and two days in Western Australia. “We are a preferred training provider for many large organisations across Australia - government, private business and the mining, oil and gas industries. Our mission is to safeguard road users by increasing the knowledge and skills of drivers, through superior driver training programs,” says Mark Butcher, Managing Director at Performance Driving Australia.
A total of 50 drivers were taught the necessary skills for driving in remote areas. The training covered aspects like advanced driving techniques, understanding the driving dynamics of 4WDs on and off road, towing trailers, driving on unsealed roads, tyre changing, the physics of emergency braking and more.
“It was important to me and the Executive Leadership Team to invest in external training and resourcing and give our team traveling in adverse conditions the skills and practical knowledge to stay safe on the roads,” says Amanda Haddad, Head of Health, Safety and Wellbeing at Blackwoods.
The next step was to understand the data our Telematics system fitted to all company owned vehicles was telling us. This data has given us insights into how we can further improve individual driver behaviours in three key areas:
Telematics insights are utilised to host leader led feedback conversations with individuals about their driving behaviours and gives the team member the opportunity to correct their own approach to driving.
This article first appeared in the latest edition of Safety Spotlight. For more safety articles like this one, click below to checkout the online version of the magazine.