What is the Electronic Driver Licence Check?

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As part of the Road Safety Bill currently going through parliament in the UK, the Government is 'reviewing road traffic offences involving bad driving'. New charges are proposed for causing death by careless and illegal (such as disqualified or unlicensed) driving. This has brought driver licence checks into focus for the UK fleet industry.

• Fleet News (April 28 2005) described how licence checks carried out by UK fleets have uncovered staff driving illegally on work business, including 1 in 1,500 driving on a provisional licence. According to Fleet News the results demonstrate the importance of fleets carrying out regular licence checks, as an integral part of any company's risk assessment strategy.


• Brake's Fleet Safety Forum News (May 2005) highlighted that 1 in 6 fleet drivers in the UK have 3 or more points on their licence. Speeding, drink driving, running red lights, careless driving and incorrect insurance are the most common offences - all of which are strong predictors of accident involvement.


• Commercial Motor (May 26 2005) reported on a 'desperate' truck driver threatened with jail for driving when disqualified and using a duplicate licence to obtain work. They concluded that 'it is essential to check drivers' licences with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) before offering them employment'.


• Research undertaken by Dr Barry Watson from the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety suggests that in Australia unlicensed drivers are involved in almost 10% of the national road toll. In the UK, it is estimated that there are over 1 million unlicensed drivers. Licence endorsements, for example for speeding, have been clearly linked to higher accident rates. Drivers who park in illegal places are more likely to engage in other criminal activities.


• More positively, US research published by NAFA Fleet Executive in May 2005, showed that conducting the US equivalent motor vehicle record (MVR) checks is good business, because MVR checks help predict driver risk and reduces costs. The Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) specifies the steps required in an MVR program, recommending that polices regarding driver licensing should be clear and uniformly enforced by fleet mangers. Failing to act on negative information revealed in MVR checks can be ruinous, with negligent hiring and entrustment lawsuits resulting in increasingly high judgments.

Interactive Driving Systems has helped many organisations in the US to successfully undertake their MVR checks online. The data is fed directly into the Virtual Fleet Risk Manager's information system, allowing drivers to be effectively indexed and relevant risk management countermeasures generated depending on their violation/offence record.

We are delighted to announce that we have teamed up with Intelligent Data Systems to provide a similar innovative electronic Licence Check service for the UK. The service will allow employers to check the licences of employees and others who drive on company business in order to confirm: (1) their licence is valid, (2) employee is licensed to drive the vehicle allocated to them and (3) details of any driving licence endorsements.

More details are show below:

• Bespoke online reporting structure for individual clients through secure dedicated password protected web pages with instant access to driver records.


• Simple to implement - clients provide an Excel spreadsheet of participant driver names, employee numbers and addresses, after which the entire process is fully managed - providing an effective intervention with minimum operational disruption.


• Through the Virtual Fleet Risk Manager, licence records are linked and indexed with other important fleet information, such as risk assessment, crash and training outcomes, to provide 24/7/365 data visibility online.


• The whole process is managed electronically, with the potential for human data errors, minimised.