Improving Work-Related Road Safety in New Zealand

Management Workshops

Road safety data

Figure 7 shows that the survey participants:

Operate over 13,300 vehicles, with a further 1,800+ people driving their own vehicle for work
Represent almost 18,000 people who drive as part of their work
Employ people who typically commute to work by car (over 80 percent of them)
Are involved in over 400 crashes or collisions involving human harm and a further 1,559 involving asset damage - at a crash rate of 0.25 per vehicle per annum (i.e. 1 in 4 participant vehicles will be involved in a crash each year)
Spend over NZ$1.5 million in fleet claims costs, and a further NZ$1.6 in hidden costs, such as vehicle downtime. Assuming that the average participant organisation makes a return on sales figure of 10 percent, they (in total) need to generate over NZ$30 million, just to pay for these costs.

Figure 7 - Exposure, crash and cost data provided by the participants

Question	Total	Average	Max.	Min.	n.	Std. dev.
How many vehicles do you operate (include all types)?	13,357	176	3,000	1	76	369
How many staff drive their own or a funded vehicle for work?	1,832	36	400	-	51	65
How many people drive on work business?	17,961	246	2,000	1	73	437
What % of staff regularly commute to work by car?	-	82%	100%	1%	67	29%
Number of road fatalities or injuries per year?	436	10	200	-	44	37
Number of motor insurance claims per year?	1,559	28	300	-	55	56
Total annual number of vehicle collisions/crashes?	1,995	33	301	-	61	61
What is your annual vehicle collision/crash rate?	-	0.25	2.5	-	61	0.34
Total annual driving near hits?	1,940	78	300	-	25	97
What are your annual motor fleet claims costs (NZ$)?	1,563,700	57,915	300,000	-	27	87,743
Annual hidden cost on motor fleet claims (NZ$)?	1,698,000	121,286	800,000	2,000	14	212,252
What are your total fleet safety costs (NZ$)?	3,261,700	105,216	1,100,000	-	31	212,794

Figure 7 indicates the relatively high standard deviations on some of the data, more detailed analysis should be undertaken.

The number of vehicles operated, number of staff driving their own or a funded vehicle for work and the total number of people driving on work business are the focus of Figure 8. Those driving private vehicles on work business are an important group of drivers, who under the HSE act need to be managed in the same way as drivers using work-provided vehicles. The question mark (?) shows where the participants had no answer to the question.

A clear starting point for many participants would be building the understanding of the full extent of risk, to allow them to manage it more effectively.

Figure 8 shows participants who represented a range of fleet sizes, from those with less than ten vehicles to those with more than 500.

Figure 8 - Participant exposure to work-related road safety risks

Based on the data provided at the workshop, 25% of participant vehicles will be involved in an asset damage or personal injury causing crash each year.

Figure 9 illustrates this data on a participant-by-participant basis. The only anomaly, with a crash rate of 250 percent, operated a very small fleet of its own, but had lots of owner drivers. When the crashes were related to the number of drivers (rather than vehicles) in this case, the rate was much closer to the average figure.

The 25 percent average figure is in line with similar studies undertaken in other countries, including Australia (Murray et al 2002) and the UK (Murray 2003). Although it should not be seen as an industry standard, it provides a benchmark ratio for organisations to monitor themselves against or to track improvements over time. There are other KPIs that can be used.

Figure 9 - Crash rates (Crashes per vehicle per annum) by participant organisation

Existing fleet safety processes

Participants were asked to audit themselves against the 10 factors shown in Figure 10. The dark grey bars show the gaps identified in their systems.

Figure 10 - Gaps in the participants' fleet safety processes

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