As a fleet manager, you’ll want to ensure that your drivers commit to daily walk around checks in order to meet the legal requirements and remain compliant. Having a structure in place for reporting and recording driver walk around checks and vehicle maintenance is an essential part of safeguarding the roadworthiness of your vehicles.

To help you set up a compliant and effective maintenance system for your fleet, we’ve put together a guide to driver daily walk around checks, sharing the responsibilities that a driver has, to ensure the roadworthiness of their vehicle. This is particularly useful for those who feel their drivers aren’t completing their daily walk around checks as required…

Driver Responsibilities – What Are They?

The 15 driver responsibilities listed below are some of the key points taken from DVLA’s Guide to maintaining roadworthiness:

  1. A daily walk around check needs to be undertaken ideally immediately before a vehicle is used
  2. If you lease, hire or borrow vehicles, a first-use inspection is essential, particularly where vehicles have been off the road for some time
  3. Should any defects or symptoms of defects occur, drivers must report these promptly as these could affect the operation of the vehicle. All reports must be recorded
  4. Should a driver report a defect, their record of any faults or rectification must be kept on file for a minimum period of 15 months
  5. Safety inspections must be performed at the recommended frequency by the operator
  6. All safety inspections should include items covered by the appropriate statutory annual test
  7. Your safety inspection record must include the following details:
  • Name of owner/operator
  • Date of inspection
  • Vehicle identity (registration mark/trailer number)
  • Make and model
  • Odometer (mileage recorder) reading, if appropriate
  • A list of all the inspection manual items to be inspected
  • Details of any defects
  • Name of inspector
  • Full details of any repair work and who did it
  • A signed declaration that any defects have been repaired satisfactorily and the vehicle is now in a safe roadworthy condition
  1. Your safety inspections system must be regularly monitored, particularly in the early stages
  2. Should any corrective work take place following a safety inspection, it must be recorded
  3. Operators carrying out safety inspections must be competent to evaluate the significance of defects. Assistance must be available to support the safety inspection process
  4. Drivers must be adequately trained and given clear written instructions about their responsibilities
  5. Drivers who complete their own safety inspections must have the correct tools and facilities for the size of the fleet and type of vehicle operated
  6. Operators are still responsible for the condition of vehicles that are inspected and/or maintained for them by agents, contractors or hire companies
  7. The dates when safety inspections are due must be the subject of forward-planning. A maintenance scheduling system should be used to identify inspection dates at least six months for manual systems or can be dynamic for electronic systems
  8. Any system of maintaining roadworthiness of vehicles should be efficiently and frequently monitored

The Key to a Good Maintenance System

Maintaining your vehicles, and keeping them in decent, roadworthy condition is good for business, good for the environment and helps you stay safe on the roads. But how do you make sure your drivers do their daily walk around checks? Putting the systems in place to ensure the relevant vehicle checks are undertaken, at the necessary times is a great start…

With a manual paper checklist, it is all too easy for drivers to tick the boxes in one location, within a couple of minutes – without really completing the daily checks at all. By setting minimum timeframes for the checks it becomes harder for drivers to fake them. It’s easy to monitor the exact time and GPS location of each individual check by using a non-paper alternative with a digital system such as EDG’s Vehicle Inspection mobile solution.

How to Solve your Vehicle Inspection Challenges

In addition to meeting with The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVLA) regulations 100%, at EDG we provide mobile vehicle inspection solutions that will ensure your driver checks also comply with The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) too.

Our vehicle inspection system prompts operators to perform their vehicle checks at the start and end of each day, and whenever else you require them to. Such checks include the checking of oil, water, lights, tyres, steering, wipers and washers.

Our system also ensures the electronic signature sign off by both the driver and supervisor. In addition to this, they work to support ad-hoc checks during the day should a driver notice a fault, as well as supporting efficient accident workflow processes, and much more.

Find out more about the functionalities our vehicle inspection system includes, and the benefits you can gain by getting in touch.