The chronic shortage and fast turnover of skilled truck drivers is one of the biggest challenges that fleet managers face.
Evidence submitted to the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for Road Freight stated that the UK currently has a shortfall of around 60,000 skilled drivers in the UK. With only 1% of freight drivers under 25, this could rise as high as 150,000 by 2020.
The Freight Transport Association notes that “the logistics industry is the lifeblood of the UK economy, employing more than 2.5 million people and contributing £121 billion to the nation’s GVA (gross value added). Yet it is facing a ticking time bomb: the ever-increasing shortage of skilled workers.”
To encourage more recruitment and retention of drivers, fleets in the United States are adopting driver reward programs that motivate employees to improve their performance. Drivers who attain certain metrics, from the number of miles driven to safer driving behaviour, receive higher salaries, bonuses or benefits like additional vacation days.
With its new Mobileye 8 Connect™ collision avoidance system, Mobileye can help companies to monitor driver performance. The system records alerts triggered when a vehicle does any of the following:
- Follows the vehicle ahead too closely
- Is in danger of colliding with a vehicle ahead
- Is in danger of colliding with a pedestrian or cyclist ahead
- Makes an un-signalled deviation from its lane
By recording the number and type of alerts triggered by their fleet of vehicles, fleet managers can then analyse this data to determine who is driving safely – or at least more safely than their colleagues – and provide incentives and rewards as an employee retention tool. On the other hand, the system is not video recording the drivers, giving them a degree of privacy and diminishing their privacy concerns.
In addition to these rewards programs, Mobileye’s collision avoidance system helps retain drivers in a more mundane way: by preventing injuries from collisions. Studies show that after installing Mobileye, drivers exhibit improved driving habits and lower collision rates.
This is clearly shown by a trial of Mobileye’s system with Abellio London, a major transport provider operating a number of routes throughout the capital. Installing the system on 66 buses, travelling three different London routes, Abellio found the number of avoidable collisions dropped by nearly 30%. In addition, there was an unexpected result – a 60% drop in the number of avoidable on-board casualties.
In the article “5 Things to Expect in Trucking in 2019,” transportation executive Joseph Evangelist predicts that fleets will focus more on retention incentives.
“We will see more things like mileage bonuses, longevity bonuses, safety bonuses and other performance-based incentives rewarding different aspects of the driver’s activity. These bonuses will boost driver pay in a different way than a simple cost-per-mile increase and will reward drivers for their efforts toward meeting goals,” Evangelist says.
Mobileye’s cutting-edge technology can help fleet managers retain their drivers and improve the safety of their fleet at the same time.
To learn how much safer your fleet and drivers can be, contact a Mobileye rep for more information.
