Brake recognises Cummins, Iron Mountain, Pfizer, Roche Australia, Vauxhall and Volker Rail

At the 9th annual Fleet Safety Forum Awards for Excellence, held Thursday 9 June 2011 at a prestigious gala dinner at Alton Towers in Staffordshire, England, a number of Interactive Driving Systems clients, channel partners and friends were recognised for their outstanding commitment to the safety and wellbeing of their employees, their families and the communities in which they live and work.

Andy Cuerden, European Managing Director at Interactive Driving Systems said: ‘IDS is again, delighted to be involved at the Brake Awards which provides an important opportunity to showcase excellence by organisations striving to keep all their employees safe while driving for work purposes. Cummins, Iron Mountain, Pfizer, Roche, Vauxhall Motors and Volker Rail all share this commitment and IDS is proud to be joining them all on their journey towards creating a Crash Free Culture – congratulations to all’.

Andy continued: ‘We would like to take this moment to celebrate the work of all our clients and partners across the world working hard every day to help people focus on the task at hand when travelling for work purposes. Programs like Virtual Risk Manager: Crash Free Culture are complex to implement and manage, and above all else, success requires dedicated leadership committed to the idea of all team members arriving home safely every night of their working lives’.

The Fleet Safety Forum Awards for Excellence recognised:

Cummins (Global) for its global driver risk assessment, monitoring and improvement program. This included running a range of events and activities to raise awareness of road safety among drivers across the world, including simulator demonstrations. Cummins has worked hard to develop and implement a global driver safety policy supported by regular driver safety communications and Virtual Risk Manager activity to reinforce organisation rules of the road and defensive driving good practice. The result so far is a 25% reduction in incidents/collisions in the first 2 years.

Iron Mountain for developing a comprehensive approach to driver safety including a driver handbook – issued to drivers on a daily basis; a driver training prospectus; driver assessments which inform training; and post-incident coaching; undertaken in collaboration with Zurich Risk Engineering have contributed to a reduction in vehicle collisions of 47%. Iron Mountain also recently received the Fleet News Fleet of the Year Award.

Pfizer (Global) for its world-wide road safety program launched in the last 12 months to over 20,000 drivers so far in over 15 countries reflecting local language and culture for maximum affect. Launches have now taken place in the UK, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Philippines, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, Italy, Hungary, Canada, USA and Puerto Rico. Further launches are planned throughout 2011 across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East as the scope of the program continues to widen around the globe. Ivor Johnson, EMEA Regional Fleet Director at Pfizer, was also elected as the International Fleet Manager of the Year at the 2011 Fleet Europe awards.

Roche Australia and Vauxhall Motors for their comprehensive data and risk led programs, run in collaboration with Zurich Risk Engineering and Interactive Driving Systems. Both organisations provided excellent examples of highly proactive Fleet Managers, demonstrating excellent leadership skills working in partnership to understand their fleet data and use it to develop, implement, sustain and evaluate highly effective programs. Both Vauxhall and Roche have seen significant and sustained reductions in collision and incident numbers, rates and costs. Vauxhall also recently collected the FLEETWORLD Fleet Safety Award for large fleets, and was highly commended in the 2012 ETSC PRAISE awards.

Volker Rail for its introduction of a holistic approach to influencing cultural and behavioural driving activity, ensuring that drivers are assessed, educated, trained, and fit to be behind the wheel. This initiative, undertaken with collaboration from Zurich Risk Engineering have resulted in a crash reduction of more than 66% in 2 years. More recently Volker Rail also received the 2012 ETSC PRAISE award.

The awards are run by the Fleet Safety Forum, a division of the road safety charity Brake, to recognise the achievements of those working in the field of road risk management. Generous donations made on the night raised approximately £20,000 for the charity.