Thursday 12 September 2013

Motor Fleet Risk Management


Castlemead Insurance Brokers find the haulage business remarkable as it’s one of the few businesses where you send a new employee out of the yard with £100,000 of kit and up to £300,000 of load and say we will see you back in a couple of days time! We've been working at ways to reduce this risk.

Our customer Framptons Transport Services have recently been featured on the BBC1 One Show demonstrating their new camera system. Castlemead were instrumental in getting them to fit cameras to their fleet of vehicles to protect them from fraudulent claims and reduce the number of incidents settled 50/50.


Interestingly the cameras were self funding as Castlemead negotiated a discount on the fleet premium that paid for the cameras in the first year. Motor fleet premiums are driven by claims cost. Every time an accident can be defended it helps in the next year's renewal negotiation.

Framptons have already seen two incidents where the camera has acted as the indisputable independent witness where the truck would have been found liable in absence of the video.

Castlemead have experience in rolling out cameras to large fleets and can help you with understanding the cultural issues that drivers naturally worry about. We are also working with Drivecam.com an American Camera supplier. They have combined cameras with remote monitoring and an analysis bureau. When the camera is tripped by a sudden manoeuvre the in-vehicle footage both out of the windscreen and of the driver gets sent for review to Drivecam's team.

They review the footage to see how the driver has performed in what may be a near miss late braking situation. If they have concerns they email the footage to the transport manager for them to review.
This could be invaluable where a driver has only just started with the business. The hope is that an accident can be avoided by training and good management using the footage as an aid. We also believe that this will change an organisation culturally to make their drivers aware that the business is looking for them to perform safely and professionally.