It is not easy for companies to decide what safety measures to introduce for their vehicle fleets, due to uncertainties about how to predict the effects of most types of measures. This uncertainty was the main reason why the Swedish telephone company asked the Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) to help them find the best way to reduce accidents among their professional drivers. This paper presents the study that the VTI designed, where four different measures were applied singly to four different groups of drivers, and where there was also a control group of drivers with no measure applied. The measures were driver training, group discussions, campaigns, and bonus schemes for safer driving. The respective accident rate reductions during the intervention period were 39.7%, 55.8%, not significant, 23.5%, and insignificant. The paper discusses in some detail why the driver training and group discussion policies may have been so successful. However, there may be scope for improving them further, because they were only compared to each other, and not to other versions of training and discussion. Some possible methods of improving safety by combining the two approaches are suggested. Another finding is that safety among drivers can be improved by measures focusing on risk awareness.
Abstract