Whether your business is in trucking or delivery or you simply employ a few drivers on your staff, driver safety instruction should be an integral part of your employee training. Below, we’ll outline the importance of driver safety instruction and offer a few tips for implementing a useful program to keep your employees safe and reduce costs associated with commercial auto insurance claims.

Why Improving Driver Safety Is Important

According to the National Safety Council, the transportation and shipping industries are among the top five most dangerous industries in American. They encompass a large percentage of total workplace injuries and deaths. Improving driver safety is a matter of implementing safety training and protocols within your workplace and cultivating a safety-minded environment all around. Ultimately, it is a joint effort between employers and employees.

Tips for Improving Driver Safety

1. Check the driving history of everyone you employ.

Trucking companies are already required to do this, as are companies that focus their business on making deliveries or transporting people or goods. However, companies that only use employees as drivers occasionally often overlook the importance of driver background during the hiring process.

Even if you don’t plan on an employee driving at all during their time at your company, driver history should be something you check into during the hiring process. You should have a zero tolerance for unsafe driving if there’s a chance of this person driving at any time. The standard timeline to check is two years.

2. Make regular driver safety training mandatory.

While it’s doubtful that you should require regular drivers to undergo safety training and certifications during their first few weeks on the job, you should also continue these training regularly throughout each worker’s employment.

3. Emphasize the use of seatbelts.

While seatbelts are well-known to be a leading cause of avoiding injury and death in severe auto accidents, many people still refuse to wear or avoid wearing them. Because of the huge positive impact a seatbelt can have in an accident, it is incumbent upon you as an employer to emphasize their use and punish those who don’t wear them.

This goes for professional drivers and part-time drivers, of course. But it also goes for employees who will only be passengers in vehicles used on the job — for example, if you have several employees take a business trip together.

By taking the above steps, you can reduce injuries, property damage, and related commercial auto insurance claims within your organization.