Speed Limiters: Are They Worth It?
Hands up everyone who has seen a 3.5-tonne panel truck thrashing down the outside lane of a motorway at 100mph in the past month almost destroying anything in their path without a second thought! Let’s see, I’m sure most people would raise up their hands
It’s a problem that has existed as long as trucks have been capable of such speeds and is one that any law-abiding, cost-conscious fleet operator would want to stamp out.
The problems and dangers are obvious. For starters that truck is likely to have your logo emblazoned on the side, which will immediately put your company on a negative footing in the eyes of any member of the public who sees it.
It’s illegal and dangerous too, so your drivers are likely either to end up with no licenses or injuring themselves and others on the roads. In addition to the obvious safety issues, this will also cost your business money.
Talking of costs, at 80mph a van uses 20% more fuel than at 70mph. That means that if your van does 1,000 miles in a week and uses fuel at 30 miles per gallon, you are wasting approximately N500, 000 per year per vehicle. Add to that higher maintenance bills from all the misuse; these foot-heavy drivers are a serious drain to company profits.
With facts like this you’d imagine that every fleet van on the roads would have some kind of device fitted to prevent unnecessary speeding – after all, there are plenty of them about. Most recently, the Federal Road safety Corps have implemented compulsory speed limiting enforcement for all commercial vehicles in an attempt to reduce avoidable accidents caused by commercial vehicles through over speeding
Most speed limiters work well in conjunction with vehicle tracking systems which have different and necessary functions for fleet management ranging from online real time access to the vehicles to monitoring driver behaviour.
In the end contrary to major belief, most drivers finally realize that journey times are the same – you don’t get there any quicker by driving too fast – and that there are major fuel savings to be gained.”
