Safety culture applied : motives, implementation and effects. This report discusses the following issues: how can road safety culture be implemented in transport companies and how are companies motivated to introduce a safety culture? For an answer to these questions we looked at: * programmes for the prevention of damages offered by insurers and trade associations; * the reasons and motivation of companies to participate in such a programme; * the measures that have been taken and the effects of damage prevention programmes; * the possible relationship between motivation and implementation. This research is exploratory in nature. Because we wanted to ask companies why they started taking damage prevention measures, we have only approached companies in this study that have actually introduced a damage prevention programme. Interviews were held within four insurance companies and an industry association, and telephone interviews were conducted with twenty-four transport companies. Insurers broadly follow a similar kind of approach in damage prevention programmes. This approach is aimed at convincing the managing director(s) of a transport company to embark on a damage prevention process and showing that damage prevention pays off. Dutch Employers Organisation on Transport and Logistics (TLN) also uses this for their course Koers op Veilig (Setting Course for Safety). All insurers and TLN stress that damage prevention takes time and that it is important to constantly monitor the changing culture, also after completion of the process, for example by followup appointments. All insurers indicate that, in addition to having a warm relationship with the customer, they hold the big stick in the form of being in the position to increase the own risk or raise the premium, although they rarely need to make use of this possibility. High costs of damages turned out to be the most common concrete reason to start with a damage prevention process. That means that companies mainly act when a problem has been observed. The next step is that some companies themselves take the initiative to start on a damage prevention process, whereas in other companies the insurer takes the initiative. All companies find cost reduction an important reason for prevention of damages, but also the company image and satisfying customers are motivations. All the companies that we interviewed, register their own crashes. Most of them also analyse the accidents. Many companies inform their drivers in collective meetings and speak with them individually in the case of damages, sometimes with a heavier conversation when there are multiple damages. Many companies also use measures to change the driving style of the driver, ranging from Code 95-trainings, specifically aimed at damage prevention, to monitoring and discussing the driving style of the drivers using an on-board computer. The insurers and TLN and also most transport companies themselves see a decrease in the cost of damages after starting a damage prevention process. Nineteen of the 24 transport companies that were interviewed claim that the cost of their damages has (strongly) declined. Not one company saw an increase in damages. The decrease in damages mainly seems to concern smaller property only damages. Companies where the insurer had taken the initiative to embark on a damage prevention process, show a decrease in the cost of damages as frequently as companies that took the initiative themselves. This means that an outside stimulus also seems to lead to a successful process.
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