Companies are not managing the risks involved with their motor fleets in the same way as they would look after other industrial accidents, according to a fleet safety researcher.

Research Fellow – Fleet Programs Darren Wishart from the Brisbane-based Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety says 4800 people a day are involved in road crashes and five die.

“Work-related traffic injuries account for up to 23% of work-related fatalities,” he told a Lumley Insurance forum on fleet risk management in Melbourne.

“A further 26% of fatalities result from crashes which occur while commuting to and from work.”

This means 49% of all work-related fatalities occur as a result of on-road crashes.

“If it was a piece of hazardous equipment, we would get rid of it,” Mr Wishart said.

“Vehicle accidents are almost three times higher than any other accident involving a workplace mechanism.”

Mr Wishart says companies are starting to manage vehicle risks more proactively and moving towards a culture to reduce the number of accidents.

“Although fleet managers record crash data, they are not always using it to stop accidents,” he said. “Instead they just use the data to look at the cause of the event.

“The data often does not reflect behaviour and factors of influence contributing to crashes.

“Minimal cost incidents are often not reported and crash data often has missing information.”

Mr Wishart says fleet managers have to look at why crashes are happening. He is concerned the factors that had led to an accident are not always properly analysed.

“Fleet managers must look at some of the missing items of data to find the pattern as to why accidents keep happening,” he said.

“Such as when a driver runs into another vehicle. Are they travelling too fast or were they rushing to get the job done?”

Mr Wishart says fleet managers can introduce strategies to improve data collection such as refusing to accept “loss of control” as the only reason why an accident happened.

“Look at what the organisational, behavioural or psychological factors were contributing to the incident,” he said.

“Also formulate link-in mechanisms with other data collection agencies and develop an incident reference number application for each event to promote cross-referencing.

“Commence managing the risk associated with motor vehicles with the same level of consideration for risk as other pieces of equipment or work processes.”