Company car and van drivers should be reminded of the dangers of combining
alcohol and motoring as police forces across the country gear up to crack
down on drink driving throughout June.
More sociable behaviour across the summer months is generally seen as creating an increased chance that fleet drivers will - usually inadvertently - drink beyond the legal limit.
Interestingly, figures released by the Association of Chief Police Officers
shows that the number of drivers convicted during last summer's
drink-driving campaign - 5.6% of 101,000 breathalysed - matches almost
exactly the rate recorded by CFC from among the thousands of fleet drivers
with convictions on its Licence Link database.
Neville Briggs, managing director at CFC, said: "Our experience is that very
few fleet drivers consciously take a chance by deliberately drink driving in
their company car or van. Ethical issues aside, the chances of losing your
licence and your job creates a definite reality check.
"What is probably much more of an issue is the employee who visits a Sunday
afternoon family barbeque and drinks a couple of cans of full strength
lager, believing that if they wait a couple of hours before they get behind
the wheel, they will be legal and safe.
"Fleets should do everything possible to discourage this kind of 'unit
counting'. It is a lottery as to whether a driver doing this will stay under
the limit. The only safe option is not to drink and employers should
consider adopting a zero tolerance approach to drinking at all behind the
wheel of company vehicles."
CFC's Licence Link is designed to provide a fast and easy means for
employers to check the current status of the driving licence of their
employees, automating an important part of the fleet risk management
process.
About Licence Link from CFC Solutions
Free to adopt, Licence Link is designed to help all employers simplify the
routine task of regularly checking car and van driver licence information
through a web based system - something made essential by the introduction of
risk management legislation.
Once basic driving licence information is entered onto Licence Link, fleet
managers can choose how often automatic checks are made with the DVLA
database - for example, annually for low mileage drivers or more often for
high mileage, high risk employees.
Risk summary reports will automatically group drivers into different levels
of risk group - for example, those with 1-3, 4-7, 8-12 and 12 plus points,
and Licence Link can be set up so that those with higher numbers of points
are checked more often.
Automatic alerts are sent to the fleet manager if the DVLA checks show
changes to endorsements, the categories of vehicle that an employee is
allowed to drive or if there are critical licence events such as
disqualification or a photo card expiring.
Further features in Licence Link include the ability to upload and store
document scans against each driver record, such as an image of each driver's
licence and driver declarations. These files are held online and encrypted
for security purposes.
Access to Licence Link is via a credit payment scheme. To run checks, a
company buys credits in advance and as each licence check is made, the
system displays the credits remaining, providing a constant balance reminder
for the fleet manager.