We sat down with Alison Moriarty, an expert in fleet management and operational risk mitigation strategies, to discuss how fleets can improve their safety culture. Alison is an industry leader in risk management and has helped numerous businesses across multiple industries transform their operations. Currently, Alison works on several advisory boards, sharing best practices and advocating for better safety standards across the industry.
As a fleet manager, you know that telematics and monitoring systems improve safety.
However, implementing safety strategies that work for a fleet is a challenge in itself.
“I’ve noticed a massive disparity between how companies viewed safety in the rest of the business compared to how they managed fleet safety. I wanted to develop a toolkit to help mitigate these risks and make fleet operations safer for everyone on the road,” Alison says.
This disparity is exactly where most fleets struggle to build a genuine safety culture.
Alison discusses what the best approach is to develop a safer fleet culture:
How to talk to your team about fleet safety
Building a safer culture for your fleet starts with communication. Implementing new strategies or adding new telematic devices to fleets needs to be communicated clearly to your team.
“Most unions understand this when the value is communicated to them properly. Union members have families and friends on the road, and like everyone else, they want to get home safely,” says AIison.
However, there is still a misconception, especially with drivers, that telematic devices are for ‘catching them out’.
To combat this, Alison says, “What they’re worried about most is what you’re using the data for. The key is to ensure you’re telling drivers this is about upskilling and keeping them safe. This is not about punishment.”
Real-world examples of how fleet safety has been improved
To ensure drivers understand the value of telematics and fleet safety, use cases can help demonstrate their benefit.
Alison mentions two instances when teams used telematic data to keep drivers safe:
- “We worked with a fleet where inward-facing cameras picked up frequent micro sleeps in one driver. It turned out he had a condition similar to narcolepsy that he didn’t know about…Once he got treatment, he was much safer. Having a camera didn’t punish him. It protected him. And it likely prevented something genuinely serious from happening.”
- “In another case, one particularly safe, reliable driver showed erratic driving behaviour between 10 and 10:30 a.m. every single day. The telematic data showed this as a consistent pattern for an otherwise safe driver. When we brought him in to discuss it and showed him the data, he started laughing. It turns out he was stopping at the same shop every day to buy a bacon sandwich, then eating it while driving with one hand on the wheel. He’d never realised the impact that had on his driving. Once shown the data, he immediately committed to pulling over to eat in future.”
In both cases, the use of telematics to support a safer fleet likely prevented serious accidents. What’s more, the data wasn’t used to punish. It was used to protect and educate.
How to use data to improve fleet safety culture
The first step is deciding what you want the data for in the first place.
Alison breaks down her approach into three different areas:
Targeted training
Spot trends and respond with specific coaching programmes. Alison gives an example: “We’ve noticed our drivers in the East region are braking harder than in other regions. Let’s run a defensive driving course.” This reframes the conversation. It’s about upskilling a team, not criticising an individual. The alternative, pulling someone aside to say “You brake too hard,” puts drivers on the defensive.
Holistic understanding
One metric in isolation never tells the full story. A driver might have high fuel consumption because they’re managing a challenging route, carrying heavier loads, or working in heavy traffic. You need context.
Systemic improvement
Sometimes the data isn’t about individual drivers at all. Sometimes it’s telling you that one depot needs better route planning, or that your scheduling is unrealistic, or that your vehicles need servicing.
When you approach data this way, both driver behaviour and wider team culture shift.
Drivers then start to see telematics as something that helps them, not something that’s watching them. Managers start to see data as a tool for improvement, not a way to catch people out.
How to work with stakeholders on fleet safety culture
“Board members often don’t fully understand what happens when something goes wrong. If there’s a serious incident, the investigation doesn’t stop at the driver. The police will look at your entire operation,” Alison says.
“They’ll ask for your driver training records. Your induction procedures. When did you last give drivers’ eyesight tests? What well-being support do you have in place? When did they last have drug and alcohol tests? They’ll check whether you’ve documented your policies, and they’ll trace accountability all the way up the line.”
Senior members of your organisation will be expected to have answers about these things. As a fleet manager, you might have delegated the responsibility down the line to managers or safety teams, but ultimately, you’re the one who will have to answer for them.
The best tools for ensuring a safer fleet culture
Supporting a genuine safety culture requires tools that help you coach, monitor, and improve:
- Driver coaching programmes: Use performance data to have productive conversations. Identify drivers who need additional training and track improvement over time with objective metrics.
- AI dash cameras: Detect risky driving behaviours in real time and alert drivers instantly. Cameras also identify fatigue, which is a significant cause of crashes, allowing you to intervene before incidents occur.
- Data integration: If your fleet uses multiple telematics providers, normalised data from SmartLink ensures you can compare driver performance fairly across your entire operation, regardless of the systems in use.
- Unified fleet analytics: SmartView consolidates telematics, claims data, driver performance, fuel costs, and maintenance into one dashboard so you can understand how driver behaviour is impacting your operation.
These tools work together to give you the visibility, insight, and documentation you need to build a better and safer fleet culture.
Use data to keep conversations going
While there are numerous tools and resources at a fleet manager’s disposal to help create a safer fleet, everything works better when communicated clearly. Whether that’s communicating safety strategies, how data is used, or how drivers can improve their driving, it all starts with talking.
Alison says, “This is why telematics is so valuable. The data shows patterns and behaviours that may have gone unnoticed without those insights. This data is then what prompts constructive conversations.”
Technology, when used appropriately, is a two-way street. It protects an operation, but it also protects the drivers. By communicating, your drivers become partners in safety. Your managers become coaches instead of enforcers. And your fleet becomes safer.