Duty of Care

Although as we stated at the top of this article there is no actual specific legislative requirement to carry out daily vehicle checks on your LGV fleet – the employer does have a Duty of Care to ensure that all vehicles that are used for work purposes are safe and compliant.

Safety

Data from the DfT reveals that 3894 road traffic accidents between 2013 -2018 were caused by faulty brakes alone. The cumulative cost of an incident involving a vehicle being driven for work can be enormous, not merely the insurance premium increase, but the knock on costs of – driver injury, HSE involvement, fines, reputational effect, the list goes on.

A quick and easy check list undertaken daily can identify issues before they become a safety concern and can, where correctly undertaken and recorded, prove that correct process was undertaken thereby reducing the onus on the fleet operator

Performance

Daily vehicle Checks allow you to identify vehicle problems before the vehicle breaks down and must be taken off the road.

Breakdowns and unscheduled repair work has a damaging impact on service performance across your mobile fleet, a preventative approach to maintenance not only reduces risk for the driver and the operator but also reduces costs by attending faults before they become extensive repairs.

For instance, identifying a dashboard warning light – which if not reported and of course acted upon can have expensive consequences – often an issue with multi driver vehicles.

At Fleet Witness we understand that the collection and storage of the daily vehicle checks can be onerous for the fleet operator, so we have included in our software a specific function that will collect and collate the daily vehicle checks enabling the fleet manager to identify and act upon the necessary issues in a simple and timely manner, and then schedule the required maintenance so avoiding unexpected breakdowns.

Call us for more information on 0203 897 3600