The news is particularly meaningful in the light of Toyota's global multi-million vehicle recall, which includes some 1.8 million vehicles in Europe and around 200,000 in the UK, due to problems with potentially defective accelerator pedals.

In the Toyota case, the resultant publicity will probably ensure that no Toyota drivers or company fleet users are unaware of the vehicles involved. But many recalls are not so widely publicised and can often slip beneath the radar for fleets that rely on contract hire companies for their information, or keep records on old manual Excel spreadsheet systems, says Mycompanyfleet, the fleet and automotive arm of global HR software provider NorthgateArinso.

Instead the company points to the benefits of having vehicle records on a central database, including their locations, which allows fleet managers to control a recall operation with ease.

In this way automated email alerts can be sent to all drivers identified as driving a particular make or model, and then records updated once the work is carried out.

Any vehicles that are missed are automatically flagged up in exception reports so that managers can see at a glance which vehicles are involved and take immediate action.

Mycompanyfleet business manager Andrew Leech said: 'We have designed our fleet management systems to allow fleet managers to keep a constant and up to date record of the whereabouts of their vehicles and their drivers, and to be able to respond quickly and effectively in situations like this.'