On balance, technological advances are proving to be beneficial to fleets. Vehicles are safer than ever before and get better fuel economy. When used properly, wireless communications are also helping fleets and their drivers to be more productive in such ways as plotting more efficient routes and enabling drivers to stay in closer touch with their organizations and customers.
But there are two applications of wireless communications in the realm of traffic safety that I believe are having a potentially very nasty unintended consequence. The applications are telematics and traffic cameras, and the unintended consequence is an all-but invisible increase in fleet liability.
Telematics, in the form of driver-monitoring devices, has been cited for a number of benefits, including fuel savings of 10 percent or more from reduced idling time, less aggressive driving, and better route management; a 20 to 30 percent decrease in fleet accidents; increases in operational efficiency by at least 10 percent through improved maintenance schedules, improved job scheduling, and fewer vehicles being out of service for costly repairs; and verification of an employee’s arrival at a location, which is useful for invoice disputes
But here’s the problem: such systems are also capturing data that could reveal that some drivers are habitually speeding and generating excessive g-forces from hard braking and making turns at unsafe speeds. In other words, the data being captured makes it possible for fleets to identify high-risk drivers. Yet, how many fleets are actually converting that data into actionable information that more completely identifies who their high-risk drivers really are? I submit that many are not – even though the data resides in their computer systems.
A similar challenge comes from the proliferation of traffic safety cameras. Camera-issued tickets are sent to the registered owner of the vehicle, but in most cases that is the fleet, not the driver. That means that most of the violations don’t get recorded on one of the major tools fleets use for identifying high-risk drivers, their motor vehicle records. Unless fleets find a way to connect traffic camera violations to the drivers responsible, they are missing another opportunity to use the data they have to identify drivers they ought to reconsider trusting to operate a motor vehicle.
In both cases, the lapses mean it’s likely that many fleets are operating without complete knowledge of who their high-risk drivers are, even though the data is available. In court, this opens employers to the charge by a plaintiff’s attorney that “you have should have known what you could have known.” Until those drivers cause a serious accident, fleets may never realize how much more risk they were leaving themselves exposed to, and by then it’s too late.
This is an urgent matter that all fleets need to address as soon as possible. Help from fleet service providers may be available, if not now, then in the very near future. At CEI, we are developing the capability to incorporate telematics data and traffic camera violations data into the risk ratings of individual drivers enrolled in our DriverCare Risk Manager application.
Every fleet needs to ask its service providers what help they can offer to avert costs that could be in the millions of dollars per accident.