Online Risk Assessments

Employers have an obligation to provide a risk assessment for any employees considered to be exposed to manageable risk, and this includes risk associated with driving for work purposes, irrespective of whether the vehicle in question has been provided by the employer or not.

To meet this need, Drive & Survive has devised the Individual Driver Risk Assessment (IDRA). 
There are two versions:

• for drivers of cars, car-derived vans and minibuses
• for drivers of Large Goods Vehicles (LGVs)

Both are interactive, informative and user friendly but also able to assess the degree to which a driver has concern about specific risk situations, thus identifying far more clearly the driver’s likely behaviour in real life situations.

The car/van/minibus version only takes about 20 minutes to complete and is available in a number of formats – web-based, e-mail and hard copy.  The online version features moving graphics and we have gone to great lengths to ensure it does not feel like a test. It also provides a degree of useful safety-related information during the process, so is far more than a simple assessment.

Essentially the car IDRA is divided into two sections – an analysis of the driving environment and an analysis of the driver’s attitude to specific scenarios. Although the first section is purely factual, there are no straightforward right or wrong answers in the second section; some answers are simply better than others in terms of assessing risk priority in that specific scenario. 

Once the participant has completed the IDRA, the calculation engine in the background produces a risk rating for that individual, based on his or her responses. Using this data, a report is compiled and sent to the main customer contact. The report effectively becomes the recommendation for further risk-reducing action in the future and provides the first piece of evidence that the employer is analysing the risk that its drivers are exposed to, and therefore has a plan to address that risk.

The LGV version of the IDRA is only available in online format and takes approximately 40 minutes to complete, as it is in a different format to the car version. It analyses the drivers’ knowledge of driving rules and regulations, their attitude towards the business of driving itself and also the specific driving environment in which they normally carry out their work duties.

The product is particularly useful for assessing the likely aptitude and safety rating of new recruits to a business.

Once online, the participant will first be presented with the knowledge element of the assessment, which consists of 20 questions drawn at random from a bank of 100, based on the DSA’s LGV licence acquisition test. Depending upon the class of licence held, all participants would be expected to meet the expected standard of an 80% score rate.

The environment in which any driver operates can have a dramatic effect on their exposure to risk and this is a crucial element of the LGV Driver Assessment. This section calls for the participant to list weekly mileages, times of day normally at the wheel and types of roads regularly used. Those drivers involved in multi drop deliveries or urban area operation are particularly vulnerable, and the assessment will not only flag this up from a risk rating point of view but may also highlight concerns which can be addressed with specific training interventions.

The final, attitude element of the process is assessed by way of the participants’ response to a series of multi-choice questions about typical driving scenarios shown on screen. The answers are mathematically weighted, based on known data from insurance, police, government department, research and academic sources. Any driver with a low attitude score should be of concern to the employer and should particularly be considered for targeted remedial training.

Whichever risk assessment is applicable to your situation, it will make an important contribution to managing road risk.