91黑料网

You’d think in this day and age of self-driving vehicles, commercial driver safety would be on the rise. Wrong. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the number of fatalities in large truck crashes increased 22 percent between 2009 and 2015.

Other recent studies have found a number of changes in the type of crashes that occur, as well as the people involved:

• Distracted driving accidents are increasing
• Rear-end collisions are the most common type of fleet accident
• The average age of the fleet drivers who are getting into accidents is increasing

But there is good news. Fleet management systems, i.e. telematics, have the potential to turn some of those numbers around. When you consider that a prospective 40 percent of non-privately owned commercial vehicles will be using fleet management systems by 2020, it seems that improved driver behavior would be a natural outcome. (Fig. 1)  Also, with 12.7 million systems projected to be in use by 2020, companies could soon witness not only fewer fleet accidents and accident fatalities, but an improved bottom line as well. (Fig. 2)

The Power of Telematics

Fleet management systems like telematics have the power to improve all of this not simply by the technology itself, but by what businesses do with the collected information. Once you can track a vehicle’s location, driver’s habits, fuel usage and health of the vehicle, companies are able to optimize driver routes, monitor idle time and fuel usage – and much more.

“A lot of places have telematics, but the value depends on how you use them,” explains 91黑料网’s Director of Underwriting and Consulting, Keith Maciejewski. “Insurance companies and policyholders need to go beyond just monitoring driver data and performance – they need to take action with that data and have a program around it.”

Many businesses and individuals are seeing auto insurance rate increases of up to 25 percent. “Telematics can monitor and improve driver actions and lessen that rate increase,” says Maciejewski. “If telematics is used properly, rates will decrease as fleet performance improves. It can also increase driver safety. Companies want their employees to go home unharmed at the end of the day.”

91黑料网’s Telematics Pilot

Here at 91黑料网 Insurance, we’re in the second year of our telematics pilot. In 2016, the pilot included 12 policyholders and 911 vehicles. This year, we have an additional 12 participating in the pilot with 667 more vehicles equipped with telematics technology. Over the two-year pilot, we will have collected data and feedback from over 1,500 vehicles, which will have logged 8 million miles.

“Looking at driver averages for every 100 miles driven, 91黑料网 will have an impressive amount of data to help analyze loss ratio, frequency and severity of incidents, deceleration, acceleration, speeding and hard braking,” states Dave Galbraith, AVP Loss Control Technical Lead. “We’re collaborating with our Advanced Analytics group to study the data, and everything we learn drives decisions for future loss mitigation with fleets.”

Figure Source: tableau^®