A client whose principal business is packaging and distributing food products to convenience stores operates a fleet of 62 refrigerated vans to distribute its product. The company makes 65,000 sandwiches a day and distributes them in a 200-mile radius of their assembly facility. At 3:00 a.m. daily, drivers report for work and begin delivering products to convenience stores within a few hours drive of the plant. However, a high frequency of driving accidents were having a major impact on their loss experience.

Marsh Risk Consulting was asked to research the problem, with an eye to reducing their overall vehicular claims. Despite on-site visits which involved interviewing the company's management teams, no concrete reasons could be determined as to why so many driver accidents were occurring. As a result, Marsh's fleet specialists decided to study the client's accident register and insurance company loss runs and discovered that 75% of all the accidents occurred at the convenience stores while the drivers were making deliveries. Of those losses, 75% occurred after the drivers had made their deliveries and were backing out of parking lots.

With this information in hand, Marsh recommended ways in which drivers could exit convenience stores safely. This included a multi-faceted approach for reducing these types of accidents and included installing back-up alarms, decals and stickers with safety reminders such as GOAL (get out and look), which were placed in the center of each of the truck's steering wheels. Additionally, a training module focusing on driving on convenience store property was developed and implemented. Using the module, drivers were trained on how to evaluate a store's parking area and plan their exit by parking the van so that once a delivery was made they would only be able to drive forward to exit. A Company policy was enacted to encourage this change in driving technique.

An analysis of the company's losses 12 months following the various installations and training revealed fewer accidents involving backing up.

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