Summary of the Napier University evaluation study on the Virtual Fleet Risk Manager

What is the Virtual Fleet Risk Manager?......

Who is using VFRM?......

The Napier University evaluation study......

Identifying the drivers most at risk......

Relationship between assessment score and crash involvement......

Predicting the likelihood of a driver being involved in a crash......

Summary......

Prepared by:

Dr Will Murray, Interactive Driving Systems, UK: +44 1484 400399

Ed Dubens, Interactive Driving Systems, USA: +1 609 465 4001

17 September 2018

What is theVirtual Fleet Risk Manager?

Virtual Fleet Risk Manager (VFRM) is an innovative global internet-based driver management system designed to monitor and improve fleet and work-related road safety and assist organisations to meet their statutory and due diligence requirements in managing their occupational road risks.

VFRMhas been developed over the past five years by IDS in the UK, Australia and USA.

Fleet Status Review / Fleet safety self-audit to allow organisations to undertake an initial low cost review of their existing fleet safety culture.
Driver Assessment and Indexing / An on-line driver profiling and competency-based driver risk assessment tool called RoadRISK to allow organisations to gather, benchmark and manage key profile information on their drivers. It covers 5 or 6 main areas of competence, skills, knowledge, hazard recognition, behaviour, personal risk exposure and as an optional extra, driving personality profile. This enables organisations to identify their most at risk drivers and develop relevant support and training programs.
Risk Management Information System / 24/7/365 management information systemallows customised real-time reporting, recording, monitoring, analysis, benchmarking and cascading of critical fleet risk management key performance indicators (KPIs)covering the vehicle, the driver, incidents (including crashes, claims, near hits and traffic violations), investigations, costs and road safety interventions.
Crash Free Culture / Information, resources, processes, and IT-based systems to allow organisations to effectively risk manage their drivers, vehicles, journeys, routes/sites and reputation.
Training / A range of on-line manager and driver training modules. For example the defensive driving program‘One More Second’has 6 highly interactive modules and helps organisations ensure their drivers have baseline knowledge of how to minimise their risks on the road.

Who is usingVFRM?

Many organisations across the world have integrated VFRM solutions into their ‘occupational road risk’ strategies for their car, van, truck and bus fleets. Such clients use VFRM to identify their most at-risk drivers and provide appropriate risk management solutions across the following industry types:

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  • Bottled water distribution
  • Broadcasting
  • Casino’s and gaming
  • Distribution and logistics
  • Electrical contracting
  • Local government
  • Passenger transport
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Power delivery
  • Retailing
  • Telecommunications
  • Warehousing.

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Such customers have applied VFRM’s on-line driver assessment and monitoring tools for the following wide range of purposes.

Pre-employment:

  • part of recruitment pre-screen, interview or induction process

Current staff:

  • annual assessment in conditions of employment
  • remote sites
  • selection of instructors and assessors
  • evaluate training needs and review success of training
  • post crash investigation

Other uses:

  • allocation of company cars
  • high employee turnover, agency drivers
  • risk management of cash for car schemes or of staff using their own car on business
  • risk assessments for insurance, underwriting, health and safety due diligence and vehicle hire
  • pitching for new business, third party service to clients.

One such client, BT, has now assessed over 30,000 drivers.

The NapierUniversity evaluation study

Despite positive feedback from this wide range of customers, who all have excellent safety records, a common question and criticism of driver assessment and training programs is ‘do they really work?’ Apart from some anecdotes and customer quotes used in their sales literature by the driver training industry, there is very little clear well researched evidence about what works from a safety improvement perspective.

For this reason, NapierUniversity was commissioned in October 2003 to undertake an evaluation study based on the first13,000+ BT drivers who went through the on-line RoadRISK assessment. This was seen as groundbreaking, in that it was the first known study of its type by theUK fleet industry and a University. It focused on three main areas.

  1. Identifying drivers most at risk.
  2. The relationship between the assessment score and crash involvement.
  3. Predicting the likelihood of a driver being involved in a crash.

Identifying the drivers most at risk

The first finding from the NapierUniversity study data was that the system could be used to identify the most at risk drivers in an organisation. In the table below for example, the system identified the 5% of drivers responsible for 45% of crashes.

% of drivers / crashes / % of crashes
83% / 0 / 0%
13% / 1 / 55%
3% / 2 / 25%
1% / 3 / 10%
1% / 4 / 10%

Relationship between assessment score and crash involvement

Safety improvements can be measured in a range of ways based on cost, quantitative, qualitative, lead and lag key performance indicators (KPIs). In the case of a driver assessment programme, one of the best evaluation methods is to compare the drivers’ crash history against their scores on the assessment.

The Napier analysis showed that VFRM has potential to predict crash involvement, as highlighted in the graphbelow where low scores on the assessment are clearly linked to higher crash rates by the two trend lines. For example 3.7% of drivers with no crashes scored <70%, whereas 34.1% of drivers with 4 crashes scored <70%.

What the above graph means for road safety is that drivers with good (>80%) scores on the assessment are less likely to have crashes than those with average (70-80%) and poor (<70%) scores.

The following graph from the Napier study shows a clear relationship between the scores on the individual elements of the assessment and driver crash history.

Predicting the likelihood of a driver being involved in a crash

More detailed statistical analysis in the form of a logistic regression was then undertaken on the data by NapierUniversity. The results are shown in the following table.

1 or more crashes / 2 or more crashes / 3 or more crashes / 4 crashes
Low score (<70%) / 1.3 / 1.5 / 2.2 / 3.3
Mid. Score (70-80%) / 1.2 / 1.3 / 1.5 / 1.9

In simple terms what this means for road safety is that a driver scoring <70% on the assessment is 3.3 times more likely to report 4 crashes than a driver scoring >80%. This relationship is actually much stronger because the table excludes the driver’s personal risk exposure element of the assessment. When thisis included a driver scoring <70% is 16.8 times more likely to report 3 crashes than a driver scoring >80%.

This can be equated to fleet costs by taking an average crash cost of £765/$1,400. An increase in the average RoadRISK assessment score of 10% could reduce incidents by at least 300 and costs by £229,500/$550,000for every 10,000 drivers assessed.

Summary

Overall, the NapierUniversity study showed the following:

  • VFRM can identify the drivers involved in a high proportion of crashes. In this analysis, 5% of the 13,000+ drivers were responsible for 45% of the crashes.
  • Drivers with the worst scores on the RoadRISK assessment are at least 3.3 more at risk than those with the best scores.
  • The system helps identify drivers with the skills, attitude, knowledge, hazard perception and exposure characteristics most at risk.
  • VFRM can be used to target risk management initiatives directly at the highest areas of risk, including a range of pre-employment, in-employment and other uses.

Since the NapierUniversity study was commissioned, BT’s use of VFRM has also been judged the winner of the Brake Fleet Safety Forum Crash Analysis Award for 2003.

For more information or a demonstration of VFRM contact

Andy Cuerden in the UK on 01484-400399 - email: ,

Ed Dubens in the USA on +1 (609) 465 4001 - email:, or

Grant Jensen in Australia on +61 (3) 9940 6553 - email:

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