Safety departments have always been reliant on Risk Management departments for information about a driver's safety-related activities. This has changed. Decisions related to driver discipline and training have relied on the information derived from documents like claim reports, citations, and MVRs. Predictive driver activities were gleaned from reports focusing on categories like accident types, length of service, accident frequency, and accident severity. Though utilization of this type of risk management data will continue, it will become secondary in significance for driver safety decisions.
Data items exported from internal onboard devices are emerging as the most important indicator of driver habits and therefore the most valuable data for safety-related judgments. These systems preemptively inform safety personnel of risky, discourteous, and illegal behaviors before they become liability-related activities. The activities identified by these systems will never be shown in and accident reports, MVRs, or CSA imports. Much of the data now collected from risk management systems will become extraneous. This should be a win for both the Risk and Safety departments.
Hopefully, this emerging paradigm will have a positive effect on accident-related activity and give safety personnel a more precise tool for driver improvement. This change in measurement techniques should free claims staff to focus on claim-related financial activity rather than collecting the data needed for safety-related decisions.
Risk systems will still be the best instrument for collecting data not related to driver activity such as a problem shipper, an unsafe parking area, an abusive driver supervisor, an ineffective trainer, equipment defects, etc. A risk system will also be necessary to determine the relationship between the data collected through devices and the probability and severity of accidents.
One downside of possessing this level of detail is that it will become one of the most sought-after blocks of information by plaintiff attorneys in litigation. If a company has data that indicates poor behavior and that company has not acted on this information, there will be powerful evidence that the company is negligent. If a company does not utilize this type of predictive technology, that too will be considered evidence of negligence.
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For any questions about Risk and Safety Solutions, Ken can be reached at kwindle@aos.biz or (405) 418-4214