Fleet telematics is different to unique driver telematics. If you ask retail insurance companies of the benefit, they'll say they don't lose out financially and that it does show some benefit in terms of high speed accidents among young males. We are becoming used to the idea of the black box, soon, I have little doubt that we will have to have one and pay road use related tax. Fleet managers won't talk of saving lives and increasing road safety. The RAF is self insured so it wants to keep the lease costs down, and these things will be a condition of that, first and foremost, lets be clear about this. Telematics monitors a few vehicle KPIs, such as harsh acceleration away from, or harsh breaking into stop lines with a view to looking at tyre and brake wear, etc.
Max Power magazine had a driver programme back in the day which made a tangible difference; it involved real people and took the best part of 2 years to evolve and roll out. However this is implemented, and whoever is responsible for it, I wonder if they know that if saving lives IS the genuinely most important factor, it isn't an efficient way of doing it? Once you establish and accept that, then this becomes little more than ammunition for those who receive a quite pointless "management e-mail".
If a fault is identified, and if it isn't rectified properly, this is just yet more annoying remote nannying. If a bad driver is identified and who then goes to plough into a full bus stop, then what? Some savvy solicitor will simply ask, "If the MoD does claim a duty of care, why did it not choose to retrain this unsafe driver that it clearly knew about or report the matter to external agencies in order to prevent this calamity?". Unless there is a proper rectification programme in place, why do it? I am not anti road safety by the way. I am a (back in the day) ex-mil trained car and ye olde HGV instructor (long story zzz) and DSA qual'd bike instructor. I too, have done my time hooning about in mil cars and looking back, it's nothing to be proud about.
But in the old days, there were proper 'Deltas' (for those who remember them), master drivers, nasty MTOs and RAFP Flt Sgts who had real impact and authority. Now? Well, Ford is trialing internal accoustic mods to allow conversations to be linked to fleet telematics.. now that IS scary and you can understand why some people mutter "thin end of the wedge" under their breath. Anyway, none of this applies to me - Alfa enthusiasts prefer flair, panache and presence to prosaic key performance indicators. Still safer now mind, maybe that's just age though. C Hinecap, nice to see you back.