The Global status report on road safety 2018, by WHO, highlights that the number of annual road traffic deaths has reached 1.35 million and road traffic injuries has reached 50 million. Road traffic injuries are now the leading killer of people in age group of 5 to 29 years.
While modern cars are becoming safer with enhanced passive and active safety features to prevent injuries to drivers and passengers, our roads are becoming unsafe for the vulnerable pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.
There are several factors influencing this increase in the road traffic crashes – poor safety standards, lack of enforcement of road safety laws, increased urbanization, bad design of road infrastructure, people driving distracted or fatigued, others under the influence of drugs or alcohol, speeding and a failure to wear seat-belts or helmets.
WHO has an excellent interactive visualization that you can use to see the status of road safety in your country.
Over-Speeding
People who over-speed and drive rashly tend to think they have control over their car. But at a certain point, it becomes apparent that their car, in reality, has complete control over them. As the WHO study shows:
1. An increase in average speed is directly related to the likelihood of a crash occurring. For example, every 1% increase in mean speed produces a 4% increase in the fatal crash risk.
2. The death risk for pedestrians hit by car fronts goes up 4.5 times from 50 km/h to 65 km/h
3. In car-to-car side impacts the fatality risk for car occupants is 85% at 65 km/h.
The responsibility clearly lies with each individual driver to adhere to speed limits and maintain driving discipline. More so, organizations having a fleet of vehicles with hired or employed drivers bear special responsibility to monitor and educate drivers on safety aspects.
AutoWiz Safe Driving Score
AutoWiz Telematics Solution for Fleet Management now offers a Safe Drive Monitoring Score that enables fleets to have a 360 degree view of safe driving behaviour across their fleet. The safe driving score is comparable across trips for a driver to monitor changes in safe-driving behaviour. And its comparable across drivers to rank driver performance on safety.
AutoWiz Safe Driving Scores take into account real telematics big data where each time instance of driving data is classified, by taking into account how driving behaviour impacts key telekinetic metrics. The score takes into account driving context such highway vs city, day vs night driving and weight of vehicle to give a score that’s truly comparable and reliable.
Our Fleet Management Solution now also offers a Driving Behaviour Dashboard where Fleet Administrators can monitor driving behaviour violations in real time, drill down to see context, severity and persistence of the violation and make interventions in time before an accident occurs.
We look forward to working together with Health, Safety and Human Resources experts in organizations to help promote road safety through affordable telematics technology and turn the curve of rising road accidents.
The fact remains that road traffic crashes are not “accidents”. They are completely preventable.
