eDriving® Safe Travels

Originally published in Corporate Vision 02/24/21

eDriving^SM has been awarded the title of Most Outstanding Fleet Risk Management Company – 2021, by Corporate Vision (CV) Magazine, in its Corporate Excellence Awards.

Now in its 5th year, the Corporate Excellence Awards are designed to recognize the companies, teams and individuals who have gone above and beyond to achieve excellence in their field, remain innovative and provide the most outstanding products and services to clients in a number of key industries across the business landscape.

Recipients are hand-picked by CV’s in-house team through an internal process of research, analysis, shortlisting and selection – this proven approach provides an equal playing field for all and ensures that those recognized are done so based on merit, rather than company size or popularity.

Specialising in digital driver risk management, eDriving helps organisations reduce collisions, injuries, licence endorsements and total cost of fleet ownership through a patented and innovative driver risk management programme.

eDriving began in 1996 in Huddersfield as a small operation with a handful of staff. In the 1990s, it helped 200+ organisations on the journey to successful ISO9000 registration and pioneered the use of multimedia and online tools, including the world’s first Defensive Driving CD-ROM for business.

Today, eDriving operates around the world, helping organisations across all industries to successfully manage driver risk. At the helm, and based in Cape May, New Jersey, is Founder/CEO Ed Dubens, who made the move from the UK to the United States in 2000 as a direct result of the company’s partnership with Zurich Risk Engineering, supporting their auto insurance book of business.

Ed tells us more about eDriving’s patented Crash-Free Culture^® programme that starts with embracing safety as a strategic imperative and building out a safety culture accordingly.

“Our five-stage solution contains interrelated components designed to work together to measurably reduce collisions and incidents caused by risky driving,” he explains. “It gives organisations a single unified platform that enables them to identify the riskiest drivers and provide training and coaching to support them.”

Over the years, eDriving’s programme has evolved from a pure CD-based delivery platform to a digital format available online across seven continents, 96 countries, and 45 languages. Today, the company’s “closed-loop” approach to driver risk management is incorporated into Mentor by eDriving^SM, an app-based driver safety solution that combines this continuous improvement methodology with smartphone telematics to provide an innovative offering that not only identifies risk driving behaviour, but also remediates it with in-app micro-training and coaching support.

Using smartphone sensors, Mentor collects and analyses driver behaviours most predictive of risk including Acceleration, Braking, Cornering, Speeding, and Phone Distraction (texts/ calls/internet browsing/picking up the phone to view a notification). As a result of eDriving’s partnership with FICO^®, drivers receive an individual FICO^® Safe Driving Score, validated for its ability to predict the likelihood of crash/incident involvement.

The Mentor programme identifies the safest drivers for recognition and riskiest for intervention; and can automatically assign additional training modules and/ or direct manager-driver coaching, all recorded within the robust manager dashboard. The dashboard enables managers to monitor improvement, and provides monthly, quarterly and annual analytics in addition to industry benchmarks, plus a comprehensive manager toolkit that guides managers through critical coaching conversations.

“eDriving incorporates the very best elements from driver safety, telematics, licence checking, driver monitoring and collision reporting data, together with the very latest smartphone-based telematics technology, micro-learning and behaviour change management techniques,” explains Dubens. “This enables organisations to see a total risk picture across their fleet and actively guide and improve driver behaviour, to help prevent collisions and incidents from happening in the first place.”

The success of the programme is evident in the fact that eDriving is still serving some clients who began their journeys with the firm 25 years ago. Customers such as BT went on to launch one of Europe’s biggest driver risk reduction programmes as a direct result of committing to the Crash-Free Culture programme.

“In the early 2000s, collisions and other incidents cost BT £25 million in direct losses, and 3-4x more indirectly. After 13 years, this rate was halved, with costs cut accordingly,” Ed enthuses.

In addition to its suite of digital driver risk management offerings, including Crash-Free Culture program, Mentor, Mentor Telematics Service Partner (that combines Mentor’s behavioural insights with existing telematics solutions), eLearning, licence checking and ongoing monitoring and professional coaching, eDriving also continually develops resources to help clients in their driver safety missions, including webinars, eBooks and driver guides. It also publishes an online global road safety magazine, three60, with road safety news for drivers and their families, risk management articles, a distracted driving Q&A section and shocking headlines from around the world. The purpose of three60 is to provide an added tool for fleets to engage at-work drivers and provide a “go-to” source of road safety information for clients’ employees.

“Our mission as a company is to help fleets to build road safety management into their organisations’ DNA, with the ultimate aim of having all employees who drive for work purposes return home safely to their loved ones and communities at the end of each day.”