A FIRM promoting safer driving among workers at some of the world’s biggest businesses has reached a milestone.
Interactive Driving Systems staged a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark 20 years in business and its fifth year operating from its global headquarters at Pennine Business Park in Bradley.
The ribbon was cut by Dave Wallington, group safety adviser at BT, a long-standing customer of Interactive Driving Systems.
The company has helped carry out risk assessments for thousands of BT’s drivers during a 12-year relationship with the telecoms giant.
Kirklees Mayor Clr Martin Bolt also attended along with representatives of key customers, Huddersfield University and road safety charity Brake.
Interactive Driving Systems provides fleet risk management services for organisations in more than 35 countries. To date, more than a million drivers have benefited from its services while their employers have seen their road safety costs massively reduced.
The company has offices in the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Poland, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
Among its achievements, it pioneered the use of multi-media and online tools in its sector, including the world’s first Defensive Driving CD-ROM in 1996, working with the British Armed Forces, Zurich Risk Engineering, the Institute of Advanced Motorists and Driving Standards Agency.
It has strong links with Huddersfield University through research programmes such as the Driver Risk Assessment & Monitoring Project.
Several of its senior personnel are graduates of the university while research director Dr Will Murray has a PhD in transport and logistics from the university.
Research projects are also under way at Loughborough University, focusing on evaluating work-related road safety interventions and in-vehicle telemetry to improve driver behaviour.
Interactive Driving Systems played a leading role in staging the first Global Road Safety at Work Conference in Washington DC in 2009 – an event attended by delegates from more than 40 countries.
And it has undertaken good practice and policy-shaping projects with governments in the UK, the European Union, the USA Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
More than 1m drivers have been risk assessed and coached via the firm’s online Virtual Risk Manager program, launched in 2001.
The company has also undertaken driver licence entitlement and risk-based checks directly with the UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and similar checks with state agencies in the USA.
Clients and partners include BT, TNT, Arriva, British Gas, Lex Autolease, Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson, Royal Mail, Vauxhall, Initial-Rentokil and Pfizer.
It also works with organisations such as the Association of Industrial Road Safety Officers, the European Transport Safety Council and Huddersfield-based Brake.
The firm runs a UK Fleet Safety Benchmarking programme – developed with Brake, BT and the Department of Transport – which has involved more than 170,000 drivers and 80,000 vehicles and saved employers more than £11m in direct collision costs over the past three years.
Dr Murray said: “In 2013, our approach – based on 20 years of successful research and practice – is to provide clients and partners across the world with the tools to turn their management of road safety into a ‘proactive’ strategy and data-led discipline. Virtual Risk Manager is now used by organisations in more than 30 languages in 35 countries, including an increasing number in global road safety “hotspots” such as the rapidly emerging BRIC economies in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia.”
