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Welcome to Driven By Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety from PDT Fleet Training. Each month, join host Hattie Hlad as she interviews experts on a wide range of topics within the logistics field.
[00:00:00] Hattie Hlad: Welcome to Driven By Excellence, the podcast that shines a spotlight onto those who set the standards in their industries, push boundaries, and lead with purpose.
I'm your host, Hattie, and today we're diving into the world of road safety with one of the UK's leading experts, Andrew Drewary.
Andrew is a multi-award winning road safety specialist who's investigated over 40,000 road traffic incidents over the last 21 years. He's dedicated to transforming road safety culture across fleets, reducing risks, and making the roads safer for everyone. Andrew, it's fantastic to have you on the show today.
[00:00:44] Andrew Drewary: Well, Hattie, it's great to be here today, so thanks for asking me to get involved.
[00:00:48] Hattie Hlad: I wanna just dive straight into it before we talk about the specifics of Road Safety and Fleet Management. I'd love to start by learning a little bit more about you.
What inspired you to choose Road Safety as your sector of focus, and what motivates you to keep driving change in this critical area?
[00:01:05] Andrew Drewary: That's quite a broad range of. It is quite a broad range question, and I suppose if I'm honest, I've fallen into this industry by default. So by doing collision investigations for so long now, the road safety aspect wasn't a priority for people at that point, when I started 21 years ago, 22 years ago.
So, moving into road safety was a request of a couple of clients, on behalf of their insurers because they kept having collisions and they kept coming back to us to be interviewed about them and then all of a sudden somebody said, well, what can you do to help us stop having the collisions? Instead of it just being aclaims process.
So that sort of set me on the road, and I think what is really needed out there is for people to understand how dangerous driving is and that is really what drives me because people don't realize that driving is the most dangerous activity any of us will ever do on a daily basis. Regardless of whether you drive for work or you're just driving your own personal cars to and from work and to prove the point of why we really need to understand how dangerous it is, is that from the last lot of full figures that were out in 2023, because we're still waiting for some 2024 figures. There was over 1700 road deaths in the country.
So when you compare that to what we hear day in, day out about homicides and murders, gun crime, knife crime, whatever. There was 666, strangely enough incidents for murders and homicides in 2023. So if you look at the figures, you're two and a half times more likely to die in a car crash than you are to be murdered in this country.
We get into our car and don't even think about how we drive because we just do it automatically. So that's the driver really is to really get to people to understand of how dangerous driving actually is on a daily basis.
[00:02:51] Hattie Hlad: Wow those stats really hit home. With your extensive experience in collision investigation and risk management, you've seen firsthand the power of being proactive rather than reactive.
In your work, how do you approach the challenge of shifting the safety culture in organizations and what role does proactive risk management play in that?
[00:03:10] Andrew Drewary: So, sort of following on from the last question, it's the education.
[00:03:14] Hattie Hlad: Yeah.
[00:03:15] Andrew Drewary: You don't know what you don't know until you know it. Those of us who have a driving license and there's over 40 million driving license holders in the UK at this moment in time. We get in a car, we drive, we get in a vehicle, we drive whatever we do day in, day out. But do we really understand what the consequences are if something goes wrong? Not just for the individuals in other vehicles or pedestrians or cyclists, vulnerable road users, it's to yourself and I think when people realize what the consequences are to themselves and if they're what driving for work purposes, what the consequences are to the organization. Then that understanding of the risk of driving and why you need to be proactive is so important.
So most people react to these things, to incidents and unless it's a really serious incident, they don't do anything about it. But those minor instance identify the trends that are going on within an organization and that identifies your education points. Either maybe for one individual or is it across the group? And I think once you start understanding, you don't need to react to every incident specifically and make knee-jerk reactions. You need to understand where the trends are to be able to formulate your education and to bring that to the fore, to change people's mindset towards road safety and the cost of it really at the end of the day.
[00:04:39] Hattie Hlad: I think it's about painting that bigger picture for organizations. At PDT we often talk about the importance of building a safety culture rather than just enforcing rules. It sounds like that's something similar that you focus on as well. Why do you believe that culture changes an important part of road safety? How do you help organizations foster that mindset?
[00:05:01] Andrew Drewary: So we hear a lot about health and safety. But driving for work only falls largely under health and safety legislation if it happens within a depot or a place of work or at a delivery location for the logistics industry.
The vehicle that you drive for work. Once you're in between on the public highway, the vehicle's not classed as a place of work still, although health and safety are executive, are looking at things in a bit more detail now on road traffic instance and taking a bit more interest in them. But they do have great guidance out there. But cause so many people drive as a whole, people expect people understand what to do because they have a driving license, and I think it's when they do things at work and they have incidents at work. What we tend to find is the majority of people have or default to disciplinary processes for drivers if they're involved in an incident and it might just be a minor mistake, but a driver gets disciplined where say you or I making a mistake in the office and sending out a letter with incorrectly typed wouldn't result in a disciplinary process where it would for the driver.
So I think it's changing that process from disciplinary action shouldn't be a default. You need to move towards mentoring and coaching people to improve their standards. But that starts from the top because we all live in a society where we want everything yesterday. It's such a quick society these days, and to get to those processes and get things done quickly. We're all prepared to cut corners from time to time. Drivers will do the same. But the mentoring comes from the management.
[00:06:39] Hattie Hlad: Yep.
[00:06:40] Andrew Drewary: So I'm great believer of asking clients when we do training sessions with them and things like that is, and when we talk at conferences is who makes a good driver?
And most people say, somebody's got a license, got a clean license, don't have any driving infringements through the telematics, et cetera, follow orders. A good driver is made by good management.
[00:07:01] Hattie Hlad: Yep.
[00:07:02] Andrew Drewary: Really at the end of the day. A lot of incidents have happened because of drivers following an order or a request from the management that has led to them being involved in an incident. Have they been given the right route planning and the right route to go? Is there a prescribed route or not a prescribed route? Have they been told, just get there as quick as you can cause it's needed. So over my time of doing 40 odd thousand investigations, 60% of those incidents involving people who are driving for work has been an operational issue behind it.
Which, if people investigate their own incidents, the marking their own homework, are they gonna identify their own faults that have led to that incident? So this is what we said about who makes a good driver. It's the management. Cause if the management say, well I shouldn't have sent them on that route, that's great. But how many managers at the end of the day, conduct an investigation, look at the evidence and analyze it and think, I've got my own training need here. I need to ask to do this, this, and this. Because if managers don't follow rules and regulations within their organization. They can't really complain about drivers that don't do the same thing.
So managements have to set the example and if they have a great example to set by being open, have the mentoring and the coaching processes in place that works its way through to the drivers who will realize that they're being supported and educated at the same time instead of just going to the default disciplinary process.
Cause what does that do? What do you learn from a disciplinary process? I've done something wrong. There's a consequence to it and there's a sanction, but. Do they put anything proactive in place to improve that driver's performance going forward? that's what I think is what needs to drive the concept of where does road safety fit.
[00:08:55] Hattie Hlad: So that really links in well with what Sam was saying, our director in the last episode. That culture directly impacts safety.
You've worked with organizations to reduce their fleet risk significantly. Can you share an example of a client where your strategies led to lasting change in terms of both safety and cost?
[00:09:14] Andrew Drewary: There's been a few over the years. I'd like to say everyone's been successful, but they're not and I think that comes down to what we've just touched on the last question. Those that embrace the idea for change and want to change will always get the best results. People perceive it, it's a costly process, but the savings that you make from your investment far outweigh what you have to fork out in the first instance to it Having the right person in the right place to make that first decision. Who can sell the project and the vision to their managers, senior managers, to the board and that is the hardest part to do first. Because if the board don't buy into it, it's not gonna go anywhere. So once the board are on board, so to speak then it's selling it to the drivers.
[00:10:00] Hattie Hlad: Yeah.
[00:10:01] Andrew Drewary: But it's not a quick fix and I think that's the thing that most people think will happen. They want something new, they're gonna do it. They have an idea, but they don't think it through properly. Anybody changing something new needs to be two or three year strategy. I've got one client at the minute that were coming to two and a half years to our three year strategy. It's worked perfectly. It literally has worked perfectly. They're probably being the perfect client for me all the way through.
They didn't wanna rush it. We had great conversations at the start to develop the strategy, re-implement, and rewrite all the incident investigation processes and driver training processes, develop a driver training program from the lessons that we learned, and you had a lead up time to educate the drivers about what the change was going to be. Instead of drivers just being told, we're changing tomorrow guys and girls. This is what's gonna happen from 1st of April and it's the 31st of March and people don't understand.
So we did a really good education process for three months as a lead up, and then the first 12 months investigated every incident, no matter how minor, whether there was a claim or not, whether there was an injury or not to anybody. To set the benchmark so we knew exactly what was going on. And it was a zero tolerance. So we talked about disciplinary before. The disciplinary action was for not reporting instance you were involved in. If you failed to report it, then there was action taken. If you reported it, there was no action taken.
After 12 Months, their disciplinary process was only about 5% of incidents that were happening, if that, and they were also management that were getting disciplined because they weren't following processes as well.
So it has to be equal across the board, and these guys took it on board straight away, and in the second 12 months, we've reduced our instant ratio by 38%.
[00:11:51] Hattie Hlad: Wow, that's so good.
[00:11:52] Andrew Drewary: Nearly 40% and the savings, yeah, just from an insurance alone has been massive. But you could easily say it's been over seven figures in the two, two and a half years we've been working together.
[00:12:03] Hattie Hlad: That's incredible. Thank you for sharing that.
I wanna touch on driver health as that's becoming an increasingly important factor in road safety. What's your approach to addressing driver health and how can companies support the wellbeing of their drivers to reduce risk on roads?
[00:12:20] Andrew Drewary: How long have we got for this question? This is probably the biggest question and topic, our most important topic at this moment in time.
I touch on one subject at the moment, at this moment in time that is really relevant. So we're partway through Ramadan. So how many employers have consulted with all their employees who are practicing at this moment in time?
You can't eat and drink during daylight hours. So what contingency plans are being put in place? Have shift patterns being changed so they can drive at times where they can stick to Ramadan properly? Or are they going out and being tired and that's not being factored as part of the process.
I've got one client in particular now who every year, probably 10% of their staff are practicing at this moment in time. But they let them take their whole year's annual leave in one go.
[00:13:11] Hattie Hlad: Oh wow.
[00:13:11] Andrew Drewary: Yes, it's a pain in the backside for them at times, but they factor that in to the process as time goes on and we have to think about that for other times of the year. Even for people like us, Christmas and New Year.
Big party time for people. But do we expect drivers to come to work and employees to come to work the following day after they've been to a party the night before? Employers need to understand their staff and get to know their staff better. I hear a lot of arguments about you can't ask an employee what medical conditions they've got, what medication they're taking because of GDPR.
I still haven't seen anybody's shown me the legislation on GDPR that says we can't ask these questions. If it's managed in the right way with only the right people understanding it. It's vitally important that we understand what medical conditions our staff have before we send them out on the road.
For commercial vehicle drivers, there's over 160 medical conditions that are mandatory reportable to the DVLA. So it goes against the misconception that you only need to report medical conditions if they affect your ability to drive. There's only a small number that need to be reported if the effect of ability to drive the majority have to be reported regardless. For commercial vehicle drivers.
Even for his car license holders, there's over 112 that we have to report mandatory. And if you don't ask that question and that medical condition results in a collision, and it could be a fatal collision, it can affect the company's fleet insurance policy, and if that driver has a medical episode away from the office, do you know what to tell the paramedics if they turn up what medication they're on? So they're not given medication at the side of the road that could react to something they're already taking. Hypothetically, God forbid, Hattie to you fall down the stairs at work. People can ask you those questions while you're there,
[00:15:09] Hattie Hlad: Yeah.
[00:15:09] Andrew Drewary: But drivers need to be aware of that they're only fooling themselves if they're driving with a medical condition and not reporting it, and they're putting other people at risk. But if something serious did happen, one of the first questions that would be asked to the employer by the investigational authorities is, well, did you know what medication they were taking? Did you know what medical conditions they were suffering?
So it's a big passion and I think a lot has changed since lockdown. People have become more aware, but I also think people have become a bit more scared to ask the questions. The statistics out there particularly for drink and drugs. So drink drive failures, roadside failures, have gone up 250% since lockdown. Drug roadside failures have gone up 400% since lockdown.
So I think there's a lot of things out there, and I think people need to be aware. It goes back to the education point. People need to be aware that, what medication they have been prescribed by the gp. It's their responsibility to read the leaflets and to ask the question to the gp, am I fit to drive while I take this medication? And not expect the GP to say, you can't drive. You as a driver license holder are expected to know these things, and unfortunately you've probably heard it on previous podcasts with your legal representatives that you've had on before. Ignorance is no defense.
Everything from driver health is education, goes back to education about the consequences and I think once drivers realize and once employers realize it's not a scary subject, it's something that they can talk about in depth, but they need to find the best way to do it within their organization. But I think from a drug drive perspective or a drink drive perspective, if you are convicted of a drink drive offense or a drug driving offense as examples. You will struggle to get a visa to go to the likes of Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand. How many families go on big family holidays to Disney World? If you've got a drink drive conviction or a drug drive conviction, you can't get a visa. How are you gonna tell your kids or the rest of your family that you are not going with them?
[00:17:19] Hattie Hlad: Yeah.
[00:17:20] Andrew Drewary: So I think the education point is bring it back to a personal perspective, and let the drivers think about it. Don't tell 'em don't do it. Tell 'em what the consequences are. All the way through, whether it's health issues or other driving issues. But if they know what the consequences are and they choose to ignore the advice, then they can't complain about it if they're caught, and it's the same for the employeers. We could talk all day on a separate podcast about health.
[00:17:46] Hattie Hlad: Maybe we will!
At PDT Fleet Training, we emphasize improving road safety as an ongoing process, and one that starts by evaluating current practices. For companies that are looking to enhance their safety strategies, what's the first step you think they should take to build a more resilient fleet?
[00:18:06] Andrew Drewary: I think it's reviewing processes, ongoing processes. The same task changes every day when you drive. You can drive down the same road, at the same time, every day of the week. But the dynamics of the road will be different because vehicles will be in a different position on the road, cyclists will, pedestrians will.
So the risk is there. If you don't evaluate what your processes are, your policies and your processes are vitally, vitally important. I think the investigations that you conduct, or we conduct for people, we're stress testing their policies and processes on every investigation. Through from compliance all the way through to just the general policies within the workplace.
Once you see things are happening that shouldn't be happening because your policy says, is designed in a way that these things shouldn't happen and trends shouldn't exist. Then you need to review your processes. So constantly review what's going on all the time, six months review, annual review of certain policies or ad hoc ones. If something is really jumping out at you very early on.
The amount of times we go into places and people give me a collision investigation policy or reporting policy, and it was written in 2016. It's never been reviewed since. It's a worthless piece of paper. And I think that's what we need to get into people's minds is that the reviewing process has to be continuous and that helps build the strategies going forward. Probably the biggest one for me is commercial vehicle drivers have to have CPC.
A lot of drivers moan about it. There's been changes recently, which I think will help. But even for those people who do not need additional qualifications to drive, organizations who have staff who drive for work should have an annual training program. Either to bring in new training skills or to refresh existing ones, even if it's to refresh your courses.
When we've seen those implemented with clients, the incident ratio goes down and the driver behavior improves, and drivers understand that it's not just gonna be a one-off education point on a one-off course, it's gonna be a continuous thing. So they get used to the fact that they're gonna be refreshed each year.
[00:20:20] Hattie Hlad: That's really interesting.
As we're nearing the end of the conversation, I'd love to hear more about what's next for you, Andrew, what projects are you currently working on and are there any exciting developments we can expect to see from you in the near future?
[00:20:35] Andrew Drewary: I would love to say retirement, and I think my wife would love to say retirement. Every new client is a challenge, cause every new client wants something different. I think what I want to do with my clients is probably impart more of the knowledge that I've got in relation to allowing them to undertake their own collision and incident investigations.
Because, there's a point I'm not gonna be about to do them. But the more people understand how to do them properly and it's not just a quick hour chat with somebody, then the better. So I want to become more of a trainer in that respect, to educate people to do the work and to take a step back and sit in the background a little bit more.
But I think it's gonna be much, pretty much the same as it's been for the last four to five years, and if if it is, I'm gonna be very happy. If the results are the same for the clients, then they're gonna be very happy. That's probably the most difficult question to answer today!
[00:21:28] Hattie Hlad: Or just watch this space.
[00:21:29] Andrew Drewary: Just watch this space!
[00:21:31] Hattie Hlad: I know our listeners will want to learn more about your expertise and what you are doing. Can you tell us where they can go to access your resources or get in touch with you directly?
[00:21:42] Andrew Drewary: So I do have a website, very straightforward website roadsafetysmart.co.uk. All contact details are on there. But they can also drop me an email at andrew@roadsafetysmartt.co.uk and I'd be more than happy to get back and liaise with anybody.
[00:21:56] Hattie Hlad: Perfect. Thank you so much, Andrew, for joining me today. Your insights to proactive road safety are truly valuable and it's clear you're making a huge difference for organizations across the uk. So thank you.
[00:22:08] Andrew Drewary: Thank you for having me.
[00:22:10] Hattie Hlad: And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to Driven By Excellence. If you enjoyed today's episodes, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. Until next time, keep driving safely and let's continue working towards a safer and more sustainable future on the roads. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Driven by Excellence. We hope you enjoyed listening and if you did, please don't forget to click that follow button, leave us a review or share this episode with a colleague. For more information and to keep up to date with industry news, head to our website pdtfleettrainingsolutions.co.uk.