Nigel Grainger brings together a related set of skills that all fleets require, to greater or lesser
degrees, but which may not have the staffing or the skills to fulfil those needs.
Bringing his wealth of experience in all areas of fleet management he offers a bespoke service through his company Fleet Risk Consultants, providing you with a cost effective fleet that complies fully with your 'duty of care' requirements.What will you do for Road Safety Week?
In a weeks time 23rd to 29th November is Road Safety Week in the United Kingdom. It is an initiative by the Road Safety Charity BRAKE.
This is the ideal time for you as a business to re-enforce the messages that your Road Risk Policies send, or better still take a look at your personal approach to the way you approach the roads.
What better opportunity do you need to engage your drivers once more in taking the time to review how they use their vehicle and the risks associated with that use.
This years theme is ‘Not a Drop, Not a Drag’, and you are being asked to commit to complete abstinence from alcohol and drugs before driving any type of vehicle.
I am in total agreement with this approach, but I am also aware of people who still think that they can drink an amount without affecting their driving ability. That is, in my opinion, criminally stupid. Alcohol and drugs have unpredictable effects on your driving ability.
These issues should also be part of your overall business risk management process before we even get to vehicles.
If you want to know how you can help your employees and yourself get home each night to your loved ones you should contact the team at Fleet Risk Consultants for advice.
Nigel Grainger
Senior Consultant
November 16th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Dear Nigel,
You ask about road safety week and what we are all doing. It has been road safety for more than a year now and not a day passes when the thought of someone being blinded/dazzled by either the new headlights [Xenon’s] or the now older [Halogen’s].
Unlike you everything I do is free and from the depths of obscurity when I appeared on BBC Radio this time last year my campaign has almost scaled Everest. Well not quite on that scale. Last year I was relatively unknown and google and search engine were not finding my website unless it was put in word perfect.
Forget the www and the uk so just google blindedbixenon.co and hit the enter button for search and I hold 19 of the first 20 results. I must be doing something right! Seven pages of results and I hold probably well over half. I amazed myself seeing as 18 months ago I could not use a computer.
Nigel you still owe me a reply to my last email and you and the readers have all been dazzled when out driving at night. The Government and the Manufacturers believe the brighter the better and that is the USP of the Xenon light.
I wrongly assumed many accidents would come my way to bolster my campaign and speed up the process of a change in the factory setting and MOT to reduce the dazzle coupled with better education which is where you and similar organisations come in.
I now know the reason for the lack of these is that drivers with Halogen lights that are not set properly dazzle/blind other road users. Especially large vans from the size of the Renault traffic up to the Mercedes Sprinter. They come at you down a narrow country lane enclosed by trees and shrubs and all you can see is a wall of light and have no idea whether it is a large van or a Smart Car. The light intimidates you to the point of submission and you are brushing against the shrubs at the side in hope of the odd larger branch not jutting out. Depending on your state of mind you sometimes flash the driver hoping they will dip to ease your pressure with lack of vision due to this horrible blinding/dazzling onslaught coming at you like one of the brightest fireworks that are supposed to be seen for pleasure up in the sky and not coming straight into your face.
You then think the driver will remember to dip his lights and all sorts of things that should not hit the fan and the driver blinding/dazzling you retaliates with his/her full beam when the onslaught of light was already more than unbearable goes beyond anything that a normal eye can cope with.
Sadly the driver that gave you all this trouble probably did not know of the scroll switch. Also forgot how much weight he was carrying and thought you were offending him.
When the same scenario happens with the Bi-xenon headlamp the blinding/dazzling is between 30 to 60% more fierce.
Epilogue
In my opinion with help from organisations like fleet risk we could reduce the 40% of all accidents in the UK in the hours of darkness.
I do realise if there were no accidents you would be out of a job but prevention is better than cure and that is blindedbixenon.co and its aim to make night driving pleasant again.
Levels of brightness have gone too far and outshone their use.
I wish all drivers that work over Christmas that have to work over this festive period a safe one and if you are able to get a copy of ADI News my latest offering will be written up in there god willing.
Let’s be careful out there!
Ken Perham
November 16th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
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November 16th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Not just Road Safety week, but every week, our free interactive website on the dangers of drink driving is available. Suitable for anyone who would like to understand why you shouldn’t drink and drive.
Please feel free to place a link from your website and help reduce the missary caused through drink driving. http://www.drinkdrivingkills.com
November 19th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Hi Nigel, At Driving Ambition we are attempting to raise £2538 in 12 hours, one hour for each month in a year and a pound for each road fatality in 2008, on the Monday of Road Safety Week. We are going to use social media, email, telephone etc. We have set up a page at just giving http://www.justgiving.com/sandra-pennyfather.
January 5th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I totally love this article, absolutely going to need to add this to my bookmarks.