T-Mobile announced a pleasing reduction in the total net costs of incidents amongst their company car drivers in 2005, compared with 2004. In 2004 the total cost of incidents was calculated at £658,000. This dropped in 2005 to £555,000. T-mobile have been working closely with Motor Fleet Risk Management experts Driving Services over the last few years and believe this has contributed significantly to the annual saving of over £100,000.

The working partnership began with an initial assessment by Driving Services of the needs of all T-Mobile employees who drove on company business.  This was followed by on-road training sessions with highly experienced Driving Services’ trainers for those employees considered to be a danger to themselves and others on the road. Recently T-Mobile have also been utilising Driving Services’ highly sophisticated, but simple to use on-line driver management tool – The Driving Monitor. This on-line tool allows quick and effective risk assessments to be carried out on all drivers, to identify high risk employees who would benefit from either on-line, or on road training. It is envisaged that use of the Driving Monitor will help achieve even more cost savings, and more importantly ensure that driver competency increases and incident rates continue to decline.

Nigel Wilkinson, T-Mobile UK Health, Safety & Environment Department, said:

"T-Mobile UK have been delighted with the excellent service from Driving Services. Driving on company business has been identified as one of the greatest risks that staff face while at work. In order to control this, the implementation of Driving Services' training has made our staff and other road users safer. Since launching the training, road traffic accidents involving T-Mobile vehicles have halved in a two year period. The cost of each accident has also reduced. All employers must ensure the health and safety of their staff while driving for work and I heartily commend the Driving Services programme to you."

We have recently carried out a full risk assessment on our fleet of 1300 vehicles and highlighted a few areas of concern, in line with the latest Driving at Work legislation.

We decided to review our Driving Policy and introduce some form of training for our members.

We invited various defensive training providers to carry out presentations on how they can help us achieve a very high level of duty of care.  Our priority is to reduce the accident rate and raise the standard of driving throughout our Organisation.

We chose Driving Services because due to their knowledge and experience, they are able to work with us in reducing our accident rate.  Driving Monitor is an excellent programme, which helps us highlight the drivers that require further training.

The up keep of the vehicle is very important and Driving Services help to educate our drivers with very simple tips on how to maintain their vehicle and keep it clean.

Driving services have been very pro-active in supplying us with case studies, literature and posters that cover most areas of concern when driving at work.

We are very focused in our attempts to have a very good record on Duty of Care and we are confident that Driving Monitor will help us achieve a very high standard.

Ronnie Wilson, Head of Leasing, NG Bailey