The essential requirements drivers must meet for road safety law
Driving for work carries weighty responsibilities. Each organization has to be committed to deliver goods or services to customers – on time, intact, and as expected. You are counting on your drivers – whether they drive your fleet vehicle or one owned or leased by the employee – to do that.
As an employer or supervisor, you need to know that employees operating vehicles on behalf of your organization are legally qualified to drive, and that they have the competencies, skills, attitudes and behaviours necessary to succeed in the driving you assign them.
Below are the necessary requirements that every organization must ensure their driver has to meet road safety law and standard.
1. Organization must confirm driving legalities.
Almost anyone can drive on the road, but to follow and abide by road safety stated law, organizations must ensure that their drivers have the legal backing to be on the road.
Organization can do this by:
A. Checking licence, issue and expiry dates to verify the licence is valid.
B. Checking the Licence Class and verifying it’s appropriate for the vehicles they will drive for work. If you are unsure what type of driver’s licence is required, go to a recommended road safety organization to confirm and be sure.
C. Have employees provide a copy of their current driving record (often called a driver’s abstract).
Benefits of journey management practices in road safety
2. Confirm the driver’s level of competence
Once you know the employee is legally entitled to drive, the next step is determining if they have the driving skills, attitudes and behaviours that are right for your workplace. Do they operate the vehicle properly? Have you instructed them about the driving tasks you will assign? Do they understand the hazards they will encounter and how to avoid or control them? Do they have the training and experience necessary to succeed? How can you tell? There are different methods to check out this, and this will be discussed in our next article.
3. Ensure there is availability of driver’s assessment tools.
Ride-along assessments are a great way to observe and evaluate employee driving skills and behaviours. With the right tools and a little practise, one of your employees who has solid driving competencies can carry out timely and cost-effective in-house evaluations. Evaluation tools can either be pre-assessment, on the go assessment or post assessment. The pre-assessment works on testing and evaluating the driver’s ability before giving them the job to be done. On the going assessment involves a supervisor or managers being on line duty to supervise the driving skills and technique. While post assessment is judged based on the result of the driving, the driver has performed during their daily activities.
