Auto Monitor
44
25 JUNE 2012
G L O B A L WAT C H
Brake honours life-saving developments at Fleet Safety Forum Awards
T
he 10th annual Fleet Safety Forum Awards for Excellence, sponsored by fleet and fuel management company Arval, was held recently in Birmingham, UK. The awards are run by the Fleet Safety Forum, a division of Brake, the road safety charity, to recognise the achievements of those working in the field of road risk management. The money raised would go towards helping to fund the charity’s life-saving educational projects and vital support for bereaved and seriously injured road crash victims. Deputy Chief Executive at Brake, Julie Townsend said, “The Fleet Safety Forum Awards are now in their tenth year and we are proud that this important event continues to grow, showing the huge amount of commitment to managing road risk within the industry. The Awards are all about recognising hard work, innovation and achievement in fleet safety,
and they are a valuable way for us to review and share good practice. Throughout the coming year, we will be disseminating case studies on our winners through the Fleet Safety Forum, to inspire and assist other organisations to do more to drive down crashes and casualties. Brake congratulates all the winners for their work to reduce risk, prevent devastating deaths and injuries, and make our roads safer.” The Fleet Safety Innovation Award, recognising pioneering approaches to road safety, went to Royal Mail. The award recognised Royal Mail’s fleet safety programme that aims to achieve the goal of zero crashes through cultural change, and incorporates sharing of good practices with other fleets. Their crash rate per vehicle has reduced by 24 percent over a two-year period, while their fleet grew by 14 percent to more than 35,000 vehicles. Royal Mail also received the Fleet Safety Analysis and Action Award
The Fleet Safety Innovation Award, recognising pioneering approaches to road safety, went to Royal Mail. The award recognised Royal Mail’s fleet safety programme that aims to achieve a goal of zero crashes through cultural change, and incorporate sharing of good practices with other fleets for their use of data to identify the need for interventions and review the effectiveness of safety measures on an ongoing basis. Gateshead Council was awarded the Company Driver Safety Award for small fleets.
Gateshead has demonstrated a clear understanding of the need to engage drivers with safety measures rather than simply issuing rules. In the past year the organisation has built on its comprehensive risk management programme by introducing a ‘good driver’ reward scheme and installing vehicle telemetry, and has had a strong focus on improving young driver safety. Coca Cola Enterprises’ Iain McKay was awarded the Road Risk Manager of the Year Award for his dedication to road safety both in and out of working hours. Based at the company’s East Kilbride depot, Iain proposed the company’s Road Safety Awareness Campaign be instated as an ongoing programme and produced content for it including more than 70 information sheets and six presentations. These have now been distributed to more than 5,000 Coca Cola employees throughout the UK.
The Kevin Storey Award went to Martin ‘Nobby’ Clark of Balfour Beatty. ‘Nobby’ received the award after 27 years of engaging with road safety issues. A former police traffic officer and family liaison officer, Martin is committed to a vision of zero fatalities on UK roads and his work on road safety has ranged from running workshops in schools to influence young driver behaviour through to setting up Balfour Beatty Plant and Fleet Services’ driver risk management programme. His ‘Drive Survive’ workshops have been attended by more than 20,000 young people and vehicle incidents have halved since his arrival at Balfour Beatty. The winners were selected from almost 70 entries across the 10 categories. Many of the entries received by the Fleet Safety Forum will be used as best practice case studies in information and advice produced by the Forum over the coming year.
Honda gets Curious
H
onda launched a new ‘Curious’ TV campaign as part of the Channel 4 documentary sponsorship earlier this month. A series of short TV spots consisting of a 15, 10 and five-second ‘bumper’ between the adverts during the Channel 4 & More 4 documentaries, will celebrate curiosity and the importance of discovery, with the theme that ‘The More We Look, The More We Learn.’ The campaign showcases Honda’s innovative technology by highlighting how real life situations and activities resonate with key features of Honda products. For example, the movement of the CR-V’s adaptive headlights as it turns corners is inspired by the movement of the eye. Other features highlighted in the campaign include the magic seats in the Jazz, the airbag on the Gold Wing motorcycle and the dash design in the CR-Z. As the campaign progresses, new films will be introduced which feature other Honda products from the car, motorcycle and lawn & garden ranges. The TV campaign will be supported online at www.honda.co.uk/curiosity which will host a curiosity trail; inviting visitors to ask questions and follow a journey. There is also an opportunity to enter a competition to win a VIP trip for two to the 2012 Paris Motorshow for the public unveil of the new European CR-V. This is the second year that Honda has sponsored Channel 4 documentaries. Last year, it focused on stories of real people who used Honda products in an extraordinary way, in their everyday life. Martin Moll, Head of Marketing, Honda (UK) said, “This new campaign for our continued sponsorship of documentaries on Channel 4, focuses on how Honda looks at the world differently and takes inspiration from the world around, which ultimately leads to more innovative products. Stories identified are told in an interesting and visual way which really stands out and we hope is intriguing to the audience.”