Tourism Holdings Australia Pty Ltd, (thl) operators of Britz, Maui and Mighty campers has won the 2017 Australian Fleet Management Association’s (AfMA) Fleet Safety Award, presented in Sydney last Thursday. The AfMA Fleet Awards seek to identify best practice in fleet management resulting in substantial reductions in costs, lowered emissions and improved safety outcomes.
The AfMA Fleet Awards seek to identify best practice in fleet management resulting in substantial reductions in costs, lowered emissions and improved safety outcomes. thl’s win is attributed to the introduction of telematics to its Australian motorhome fleet – influencing driver behaviour, communication, road safety and vehicle problem diagnostics. The initiative is currently being trialed in thl’s New Zealand fleet and will be rolled out to all thl vehicles over the next 24 months.
The implementation of telematics provides valuable real-time information on braking, cornering, speed, lane transgression and enables alerts and notifications to be sent to the driver. Grant Webster, CEO thl says, “the results so far have been significant including a 70% plus reduction in speeding events. This improvement in driver behaviour has subsequently contributed to a circa 25% reduction in R&M costs per hire day over the last 2 years.
thl Australia has been the test environment for the telematics programme, and we aim to implement safety alert systems that will contribute to safer driving in all our vehicles across our operations in New Zealand, North America and the UK by 2020.”
75% of thl’s rental customers globally arrive to experience a self-drive motorhome holiday from overseas. Driving overseas can be very different to driving in their home countries.
Since 2014 thl has been deeply involved in working to improve driver safety both in Australia and New Zealand, starting with the telematics programme in Australia and working with the Visitor Driver Safety Signature Programme led by the NZ Transport Agency in New Zealand.
The NZ industry Code of Practice that was developed though through the Visitor Driver Safety Signature Programme was designed to educate visitor drivers before they arrive, when they arrive and when they are on road.
This included development of safe driving videos, training of front line staff to have educational conversations with customers and at the same time assess their readiness to drive. This educational work along with telematics has gone a long way to improve driver safety.
The telematics initiative is a part of thl’s sustainability programme, of which road safety is paramount. The company recently released its inaugural Sustainability Report along with its 2017 Financial Report.
Read more at http://tourismticker.com/2017/09/18/thl-wins-australian-2017-fleet-safety-award/
