Thursday 14 July 2011

Drivers Remain Key to Accident Prevention

Can less serious accidents be prevented?
Image Creds: LeasePlan

At the end of last month  the Department for Transport  announced that road deaths in the UK have dropped below 2,000. Based on the figures for 2010, the figure of 1,857 fatalities over the course of the year represents the lowest total since records began in 1926.

This is a remarkable statistic given that there are now over 31,000,000 cars on the UK’s roads, compared with just over a million in 1930. The steadily declining fatality rate owes much to technology; the introduction of simple measures such as ‘cat’s eyes’ and compulsory seatbelts were key developments in ensuring a steady drop in fatalities throughout the latter years of the 20th century.

Technological Progress

Continuing advances in the field of safety is something that manufacturers often pride themselves on, and with the developments of airbags and electronic stability programmes, cars are certainly safer than ever before. Interestingly, despite these developments, there has been relatively little research into whether drivers themselves are safer than in years gone by.

Human error still accounts for between 90-95% of all car accidents, and it would seem that in-car innovations are not necessarily preventing accidents from happening, but instead are reducing the after-effects. For this reason, it would seem logical that drivers are trained to higher standards.

Over the past few years there have been various suggestions that the driving age should be raised to 18, that older drivers should be retested or that speed limits should be changed. Any one of these measures would have proved contentious, but with regard to safer driving, fleet managers have an opportunity to ensure that their staff are amongst the best educated on the roads, without attracting such controversy.

With around 10% of UK traffic being made up of company cars, and approximately 1 in 3 involved in an accident annually, increased training could help to lower these statistics further and help to re-define business drivers as the safest and greenest drivers on the roads today.

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