The managing of accidents traditionally involves controlling the process of getting a vehicle back on the road after an incident, taking in everything from initial impact and aftermath through repair and back into usage.
But the market is becoming increasingly complex in how it links in with other vehicle management systems in an attempt to prevent incidents from happening as well as managing them efficiently when they do.
“The development I see is people wanting the information, but not in isolation. They are using it to support a bigger risk management element,” Hitachi Capital’s fleet services manager Malcolm Roberts explains to BusinessCar, saying that data on accidents is increasingly being combined with maintenance, licence checks and telematics to provide a rounded view of driver risk.
“Cost and risk control are intrinsically linked – the more safely an employee drives, the less likely they are to have an accident; and if they do have an accident it’s about using that information,” says the RAC’s head of accident services Jim Monteith.
“I think larger fleets understand the benefit of accident management, and most feed management information back from the accident management process into how to effect driver behaviour and the risk management space.”
The RAC has recently announced a move back into the accident management sector, investing £2m in systems in the process.
Total Accident Management is another seeing more fleets look at the additional benefits rather than the pure repair process.
“Fleet managers are becoming more alive to the additional business benefits rather than cost containment – which is a given – that you can get from accident management,” comments operations director Amanda Mullans.
“Accident management when delivered properly and well is more of a consultancy arm for the business, supporting the overall strategy so it doesn’t fall foul of regulation.” Mullans adds that accident management used to be “task-orientated rather than a strategic solution”, but a shift has occurred in the past two years in particular.
There are still fleets that don’t use any accident management offering, but in the main these are smaller fleets, according to the players we spoke to.
“From my experience, larger fleets are all taking it, it’s the smaller ones that don’t realise the potential,” says Roberts, while Mullans says it’s up to accident management firms to make sure companies understand the reasons for employing them.
“I think there’s a little bit of a lack of awareness, or people have always done things in a certain way. Our job is to make them understand the benefits,” she says. “From time to time you do come across people saying ‘I didn’t know we had a problem’, or ‘I didn’t know it could be improved’.”
One company looking specifically at addressing the cause of some common accidents is E-Training World, which has recently launched two new web-based courses targeting the most frequent source of damage to company cars: rear-end collisions and car park accidents.
The company argues that all accidents are preventable if more care was taken by drivers.
“If you offered a driver £1m to get from A to B accident free, including parking their car, they would be able to do it,” comments E-Training World sales and marketing director Jonathan Mosely. “This scenario proves it can be done and it demonstrates that accidents when manoeuvering and at low speed are down to attitude rather than ability.”
“Even small knocks and scrapes can be extremely expensive to repair,” adds E-Training World managing director Graham Hurdle. “We have developed these new e-modules to help educate drivers of the causes of these incidents – more often a lack of concentration and anticipation – and how to avoid them.”
Swiftly getting damaged cars back on the road is vital to keeping the cost of an accident under control, especially in minimising additional costs away from the actual incident itself.
“The downtime element transposes into cost, as if you have a vehicle off the road then some fleets will fund a hire car,” says Roberts.
“The provision of a small courtesy car is standard, but it’s not always adequate for a customer so therefore will have exposure on cost.” He cited the example of a company director used to a BMW X5 off-roader not being keen to swap to a small city car courtesy model.
One area where the industry has upped its game in recent times is in controlling the costs of the car that’s been hit by a fleet driver.
“With third-party capture, if we’re not very quick at doing that, and five or six years ago we weren’t very good, you can be in for an expensive hire bill,” says Monteith. “We’ve become acutely aware of it in the last five years with personal claims, and the more third parties we can capture then the smaller the bills.”
Hitachi’s Roberts feels the industry still has room for improvement in this area. “They like the theory, but people haven’t got their heads around it yet,” he says, referring to the attitude of ensuring an accident management firm takes control of the innocent party involved in an accident with a fleet vehicle to make sure hire and personal injury costs in particular are managed.
But accident management, in its advanced form, is looking like it’s here to stay.
“It’s not changed a great deal over 10-15 years. The primary goal is to cut cost, and secondary is the commercial terms and how quickly we can turn the vehicle around,” says Monteith.
Mullans points out there are differences in the accident management offerings from different companies, and ensuring a fleet is with a suitable one is a continual process. “My advice is to make sure they refresh their service proposition – what was relevant five years ago won’t necessarily be relevant for the next five years,” she says.
“I think increasing efficiency will be the thing – I can’t see people stopping having accidents,” concludes Roberts. “Incident rates are going down and that’s being attributed to the economy and people doing less miles. When things improve, despite the car safety systems, everything says it will go back up as people drive more.”
