In the last article, E-Training – world – an introduction to hazard perception, we addressed some of the ways that increasing your fleet’s driver hazard perception skills can help reduce costs from your transport budget, not least your renewal van insurance quote and subsequent premium. But there are other hidden factors to improve your overall fleet’s driving performance that can be implemented.
Although still drawing very much on a driver’s ability to observe, these are more about non-hazardous driving situations on the road ahead and the manner of driving, doing as much to protect the engine, its components and subsequently the environment by doing so.
E-training world are not all about saving money on man hours and fleet insurance; there are other cost saving measures that can be derived from a change in driving habits. Again, it means taking notes of the layout ahead, but, if you can see a set of lights on red a distance in front, rather than proceed at the same speed and come to a stop and have to restart the engine, slow right down and cruise along in a lower gear. The odds are that, by the time you get to the traffic queue, the lights will be changing and you can accelerate from a slower speed, rather than induce wear and tear and up fuel consumption by having to get rolling from a standing start.
A similar method can, of course, be adhered to at traffic islands, especially when there is a lengthy run up to a motorway exit, for example. Rather than continue towards the junction island at seventy, slow down in the same manner as described in approaching traffic lights. In both instances, obviously not to the extent that you will be endangering yourself by inviting a collision due to another driver’s actions directly behind you, deploy those tactics to reduce engine wear and excess fuel consumption. Okay, if they run into the back of you it won’t be on your van insurance policy that you’re claiming on but it will mean off-road time and possible injury!.
In the risk assessment program used by E-Training world, these skills are taught and enhanced by portraying various images of possible hazards on screen, which the driver then has to click to say they’ve seen and took measures to avoid the possible ensuing incident. There is a supplementary program to the main one that concentrates solely on hazard perception.
If you are serious about improving your carbon footprint by using less fuel, cutting down service fees by reducing wear and tear and are looking for an indirect way of getting cheap van insurance, then this type of test for your drivers could be just what you’re looking for.