When a fleet vehicle is on the road, the stakes are high. Both safety managers and drivers are under pressure to prevent accidents and reduce risk. And both rely on the same tool to gauge a driver’s performance behind the wheel, and thus the potential for accidents: driver scoring technology.
Driver scoring is intended as an objective way to assess and improve driver safety. It’s now a staple of the industry. But there’s a problem: driver scoring, as most know it today, fails to deliver on its stated objective effectively.
When it comes to providing safety leaders with the information they truly need to reduce accidents, existing systems come up short. Meanwhile, drivers lack a clear picture of how to improve their skills or understand whether they’re actually safe drivers.
When you get down to it, driver scoring 1.0 functions more like a box to be checked rather than a genuinely useful tool that bolsters business and gets people home safely. Safety managers and drivers — and everyone on the road — deserve better than the status quo.
Fortunately, a better solution is here. Driver scoring 2.0 fills the gaps left by today’s legacy systems with standardized scoring built on a combination of AI, edge computing, full-service telematics, and the analysis of millions of data points.
Financial pressures, legal complexities, and the myriad demands on safety managers underscore the importance of reliable data for improving safety within fleets. Here’s a closer look at some of the key areas that contribute to the need for better driver scoring.
Rising cost of accidents
Accidents not only jeopardize lives; they also create significant financial consequences for fleets. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, over half a million large trucks were involved in accidents in 2021. And the average accident costs between $16,000 and $75,000, according to Automotive Fleet. If there’s an injury or fatality, those costs balloon.
Expenses encompass direct costs such as vehicle repairs, insurance deductibles, and workers’ compensation and fines. Indirect costs include administrative time, lost productivity, and damage to the company’s reputation.
Rising insurance rates
As a consequence of accidents and legal settlements, companies grapple with another expense: increased insurance premiums. Over the past decade, premiums have surged dramatically, with ATRI research revealing a 47% increase in commercial truck insurance premiums per mile, from 5.9 cents to 8.7 cents. As accidents and insurance premiums increase, so does the financial burden on companies.
Navigating complex responsibilities
Safety leaders shoulder weighty responsibilities, including accident prevention, risk reduction, compliance, and reducing high operational costs. They’re also tasked with training new and existing drivers. Balancing these responsibilities creates challenges, particularly in providing relevant and meaningful coaching to individual drivers — especially with partial driver scores and data. As a result, training and the use of inward-facing cameras are often associated with punishment rather than fostering engagement with drivers.
High driver turnover
Engaging drivers becomes even more complex for safety managers given the high turnover in the transportation industry, reaching as high as 94% for long-haul truckers. This churn leads to a nonstop and costly cycle of hiring and training, placing a strain on time and budgets. And the pace of resignations isn’t likely to slow down with a projected shortage of 82,000 truck drivers in 2024.
The way safety managers measure driver scores today doesn’t do much to prevent or minimize the risks and complexities that safety managers must manage. Let’s look at some key deficiencies with today’s legacy tech.
Limited data
The legacy systems safety managers use today are constrained by their ability to only record trigger-based negative events, such as missed stop signs, speeding, and hard braking. This narrow focus provides an incomplete picture of factors that influence driver behavior, like sudden lane changes by other drivers. As a result, safety managers lack sufficient information to assess driver performance or understand the underlying causes behind negative events. In the case of a driver who brakes hard to avoid a collision caused by another motorist’s negligence, the recorded negative event is actually a positive action.
Subjective information
Fleets often configure or customize their driving scoring systems, resulting in subjective metrics that don’t accurately reflect risk. In these systems, drivers who commit similar infractions receive similar scores, regardless of frequency or severity. For example, a driver who runs one out of three stop signs and another who runs one out of 10 can have the same driver score. This gives safety managers and drivers a distorted view of performance because, given context, one driver is clearly a safer driver than the other.
Companies working off this kind of subjective data are in a bind. Even if they analyze and react to scores in the right way—through driver training, for example—they’re not going to see the results they want because the initial data lacks objectivity.
And this isn’t just a problem in antiquated, legacy scoring systems. Many companies today continue to work with subjective metrics, even if they don’t realize it. If your driver scoring system allows you to configure or customize how infractions are scored, then it’s likely you’re working off skewed information.
Not actionable
With the driver scoring status quo, scores and data lack context and can’t provide useful information for improving driver safety.
To illustrate, imagine a lender receiving a partial credit history for an individual, showing three missed payments in the last six months, and a certain amount of debt. It would take a significant amount of time and effort for that lender to analyze that raw information and assess the level of risk in extending a loan.
Similarly, today’s legacy driver scoring systems give fleet managers inconsistent and disorganized information, requiring them to decipher the implications for their individual drivers and overall fleet. This leads to overwhelm and analysis paralysis, limiting their ability to implement effective safety measures and improve overall performance.
Additionally, safety managers can be lulled into a sense of security by the fact they have data in hand; but if that data is incomplete or without key context, the effects can be as harmful as having no data at all. Many companies are unaware of this weakness in their driver scoring systems and are flying blind as a consequence.
A powerful combination of AI, HD video telematics, edge computing, complex data analysis, and a proprietary algorithm builds the next-gen of driver scoring. Together, they fully capture the complexity of driver performance in order to produce objective and accurate driver scores.
Fleet safety AI and HD cameras
Next-gen driver scores aren’t based solely on triggers. AI-powered video telematics, like Driver-i®, analyzes 100% of the driving day (the only tool on the market to do so), capturing details such as the total number of stop signs encountered, not just those missed; environmental factors such as freeway versus highway; and the size and weight of a vehicle. This allows for comprehensive detection of a wide range of risky and positive driving behaviors, all of which come together in a compliance score. While the status quo is like a film camera, slow and limited in the images it captures, next-gen technology is like an iPhone in burst mode, fast and exhaustive.
Edge computing
On-board edge computing allows for the fast collection, processing, and storage of large amounts of data on the Driver-i® device, rather than relying on a localized server. This prevents data loss and reduces lag time in transmitting information to fleet managers, as well as providing drivers with real-time alerts. Fast, local processing means managers can make decisions based on real-time analytics.
Complex data analysis
Netradyne’s dedicated data science team analyzed more than a billion miles of driving data to correlate individual behaviors with a proprietary mathematical model to predict accident probability accurately. Each behavior’s impact on collision risk is carefully evaluated, resulting in nuanced scoring. Drivers are graded on a 1,000-point scale, with a target of 850 and above for optimal safety performance.
Similar to how lenders use FICO scores to assess credit risk, Netradyne’s GreenZone® Score provides safety managers with an objective, data-driven method to evaluate risk. This approach empowers decision-making by providing actionable insights, ensuring safety managers can make informed choices without feeling overwhelmed by data. And drivers have an accurate understanding of their skills and where they need to improve.
The new era of driver scoring is one of increased efficiency and safety standards. Here’s how fleets transform when they adopt more comprehensive, accurate, and actionable driver-scoring technology.
Proactive coaching
Driver scoring 2.0 changes driver coaching by shifting the focus from punishment to recognition and reinforcement of good driving behaviors. Instead of being about doing fewer bad things, coaching becomes about doing more good things.
In-app recognition and gamification elements and opportunities for in-person acknowledgment motivate drivers to self-coach and continually improve their skills. This positive reinforcement not only enhances driver retention but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement within the fleet.
Ultimately, driver scoring 2.0 transforms the narrative surrounding driver scores, instilling a sense of pride and accomplishment in drivers as they strive to achieve excellence on the road.
Reduction in collisions
The primary goal of driver scoring 2.0 is the reduction of collisions. Netradyne’s data analysis has confirmed a direct relationship between GreenZone Scores and a decrease in severe incidents involving drivers.
Specifically, for every 50-point increase in a fleet’s GreenZone Score, there’s a 13–15% reduction in accidents per million miles. A study comparing two groups of fleets — one consisting of 100 fleets and the other of 50 fleets — over 12 months revealed that Netradyne customers new to video telematics witnessed an average 150-point surge in their GreenZone Scores within the first year.
This suggests that fleets adopting Netradyne’s next-gen technology could experience a significant reduction of over 30% in accidents per million miles during their first year of use.
Financial benefits
Driver scoring 2.0 not only promotes safety but also delivers tangible financial advantages for fleets. By reducing the frequency and severity of accidents, companies can effectively free up resources that would otherwise be allocated to claims payouts.
With robust telematics data at their disposal, fleets can vigorously defend against unfounded claims and show proof of a driver’s history of compliant driving, mitigating financial liabilities.
Enhanced conversations
A lot of the arguments that happen between a driver and their supervisor are based on the unprovable — the supervisor doesn’t understand the full series of events. With driver scoring 2.0, comprehensive data sets facilitate more informed discussions. This also fosters greater trust and transparency, minimizing disputes and streamlining incident resolution processes.
Next-gen scoring isn’t static. It’s dynamic, adapting, and evolving as we incorporate new behaviors, new data, technology, and methodologies. Every improvement feeds our ability to give fleet managers and drivers the tools and information they need to improve driving and performance and most importantly, reduce accidents.
Learn more about Netradyne’s proprietary methodology and the ROI of proactive accident reduction.
* Individual results and conditions may vary.
** Based on customer data.
† Netradyne must receive written approval to share client data.
Images may be for illustrative purposes only and may not be an exact representation of a product.
