If you’ve taken to the streets during this pandemic, whether it be to get groceries or pick up some home renovation project material to fill your free time, you know that there are less drivers on the road than before With this change in everyday routine comes an unexpected trend – during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in deadly car crashes.

Some of the major violations being seen?

According to the Wall Street Journal, on a miles-driven basis, fatalities are up despite traffic volume being down. States like Minnesota and Louisiana recorded more traffic fatalities during this COVID-19 period than in the same timeframe of past years. Even in states like Missouri, fatality rates increased even with total crash deaths declining. The major culprit? Speeding.

Beginning mid-March in New York City, the city’s speed cameras captured an 81 percent increase from 2019 in speeders during a five-week stretch. Despite this increase in speeders on the road, it seems as if the city’s traffic deaths are exponentially lower. With the general public having to almost solely rely on essential workers in some way or another, how are you ensuring that your drivers are the best to be behind the wheel?

An easily-implemented solution

Better yet, what could help ensure that only the best drivers are on the road, whether on or off the clock? Continuous driver monitoring. Now more than ever, the importance of continuous driver monitoring shines through, allowing you to see into your driver population that may be racking up serious violations at a much higher rate, protecting you against risk of employee crashes and nuclear verdicts.

With working from home a common commute for millions now, processes once antiquated such as manual motor vehicle record pulls have become too cumbersome to translate from office space to at-home office. Continuous driver monitoring allows you the untethered freedom of near real-time alerts, providing you with visibility into only your riskiest drivers.

Think before you speed

So consider the next time you read about one of the 2,500 speeding tickets issued for driving more than 100 MPH by the California Highway Patrol during this COVID-19 period. One of those drivers could be yours and deemed essential – protect yourself from risk today with continuous driver monitoring and gain visibility to save time, money and lives.

Interested in learning further on how to keep your drivers safer and your risk low? Download our white paper.