 Every 15 minutes, someone in Australia and New Zealand is killed or seriously injured in a motor vehicle accident. But you can be a part of the solution by providing safe cars. Car accidents are the leading cause of work-related fatalities across Australia and are 7 out of 10 Australian employees on the road every day. This is a serious risk to your business, your employees, their families and our society. Ensuring the safety of your employees on the road results in a commercially successful and respected company. Your choice of car has a significant impact on risk of death, the extent of injury, employee recovery, time off work and your workplace insurance premium. Choosing the safest car minimises this impact on your employees and the risk to your business. As a really responsible employer, IAG has a five-star ANCAP policy, primarily because we believe we have a higher duty to our employees to keep them safe. Other businesses should implement this policy, I believe, because it does keep productivity at its highest level. It's economically the most sensible thing to do, as well as actually supporting that duty of care we have to everybody that works for us. Vehicles really are the safest and most affordable they've ever been at the five-star standard, and so why would you not employ a five-star policy today? Really, I think road safety is everyone's responsibility. Let's get on with it now. There are some fleet managers out there that are influenced or dictated by procurement departments or financial people. They need to look at the vehicle as an investment, not only as a financial investment for the organisation, but an investment in their people. There is a clear return on investment, not only in dollars, but in their human resource. We haven't had many major accidents in my time as the fleet manager. One was a head-on, where our driver was hit by another driver in the wet. That car was a write-off, all the airbags deployed. That driver was back at work within two days. If we didn't have a safe vehicle policy, if we had had an inferior vehicle, that driver may not be back at work or may not even be with us anymore. Community and staff safety is very important to big roads. One of the ways that we can support this is to provide safer vehicles for our staff to use while they're on the road. It also helps with your grades to lead the adoption of safer fleets for all other fleet operators. The average age of the registered fleet Victoria is around about ten years. Government vehicles are generally in service for about two years. These vehicles then flow on to the public and by government fleets having five-star policies, we get a quicker uptake of these safer vehicles on the road. The cost of buying a five-star vehicle is much the same as the cost of buying a four-star vehicle. The potential there for a five-star vehicle is that there be less accidents, less serious injuries, people can return to work quicker and we all know that safety costs less. When it comes to the safety culture at Origin, I believe actions speak louder than words. So when we say that due care is our most important principle and the health and safety of our employees is our most important priority, putting them in the safest vehicle really reinforces to them that we meet it and that we'll invest in it and that we take their safety as the most important consideration. So the biggest benefit to the policy is for our people and reducing the incidents and injuries that they experience. But at a business level we have a huge benefit in that we reduce incidents and reduce the cost and the claims associated with those incidents. Once you've got that vehicle in your business, the maintenance of that vehicle and more importantly any modification done to that vehicle has the potential to detract from the safety of that vehicle in the first place and it's really important to risk assess any changes that you make to a vehicle. All businesses can have a safe vehicle policy and you don't have to have a huge vehicle fleet to do that. Even a small number of cars that are faster rated will protect perhaps a lot of people because a lot of these fleet cars involve multiple people driving them at different times. I think the social benefits outside the company are our cars that we buy with these features are then sold to the general community once we decide to sell them and so that's at a lower price. It means the people who don't have access to these technologies normally can buy them and so there's a flow-on effect. You get long-term safety benefits for the entire community and in fact we give our own employers the first right to purchase those cars because we believe that not only at work should they be safe but they should be safe when they drive for private purposes. We want them to come back to work safely every day. Bosch believes that training your drivers is critically important so they shouldn't just be put in the safest possible five-star and cab-rated car but they should know what's in that car, what are the safety systems, how do they work and when I'm driving along and I hear a beep or a buzz or I see some signal what does that mean and what do I need to do as a result. About 10 years ago Bosch instituted the policy of putting our drivers into five-star and cab-rated vehicles. Back then it was a little bit of a challenge because there were no near as many of those vehicles available in each category as there are today and today it's quite common that you can find a five-star option in every category. Bosch has always had a very strong safety culture but recently we've changed our reporting policy to positively reward the reporting of hazards and this helps create the mindset where people are actually looking for safety risks around the site. Having a five-star safest vehicle policy outweighs any sort of costs because the benefits are critical. The 3M ACRS Diamond Road Safety Award is part of the UN Decade of Action for Improved Road Safety. 3M supports this because it improves road safety initiatives both from private and government bodies and all businesses are encouraged to enter this award because you can give them a chance to be recognised by their industry peers and also win a trip to the USA to visit the 3M Customer Innovation Centre. The decision to provide your employees with the safest possible fleet is a decision for better business practice, security for employees and their families and a safer society for everyone. It has never been easier or more accessible to make a meaningful commitment to safety on the road. To start your conversation make contact with the National Road Safety Partnership Program or download the NRSPP Guide to Safe Vehicle Purchasing.