It’s common for companies to pull MVRs as part of their new-hire screening process. From there, many states, organizations (such as the FMCSA) and companies have regulations in place requiring annual MVR pulls on drivers. What many companies don’t realize is that this is an infrequent practice of checking MVRs that actually puts your company at risk.
Thinking Beyond Your Pre-Employment Driving Record Checks
The moment your driver gets behind the wheel after an at-hire or annual MVR pull, you lose all visibility into the risk that driver presents for the rest of the year. This practice leaves you with an immense lack of knowledge of your employees’ driving behavior – creating a “visibility gap” that effectively eliminates any form of proactive action you may be able to take.
At SambaSafety, we’ve been analyzing driver data for over 20 years. We’ve found that when a company’s visibility gap goes unmonitored:
- 10% of drivers make up 40% of a company’s crash-related costs
- 3-5% of drivers have an invalid license
- 19% of fatalities involve invalid licenses
Let’s focus in on the 3-5% of drivers who are currently driving with a suspended license. We’ve found that 80% of these suspensions are typically due to administrative reasons. Many times, these individuals are simply unaware of the suspension – which is why they remain on the road. While there’s no intentional malice, these individuals create significant risk for their company, especially when considering how many motor vehicle fatalities involve a driver with an invalid license.
Companies can’t afford to rely on the honor system for something as significant as managing driver risk. How would you know if an employee gets a DUI, doesn’t self-report and continues driving on behalf of your company? Would you find out about this violation the next time you pull an MVR? What if that employee who received the DUI was also involved in a crash on company time before you found out?
In order to gain full visibility of your company’s driver risk, you need to think beyond manual MVR pulls and driver self-reporting.
Get Your Copy: SambaSafety Crash Prediction Study
Implementing Continuous MVR Monitoring
While MVR data is the gold standard for understanding driver risk, it needs to be utilized in the right way for it to be effective. With continuous MVR monitoring, companies receive automated alerts when an employee receives a negative violation – instead finding out months later at the next manual MVR pull. Upon receiving a violation, safety managers can then indicate if someone is more likely to be involved in a crash within the next year and intervene before that crash occurs. But how does this work?
The incredible thing about continuous MVR monitoring is that it can actually help predict and prevent future crashes. Our 2021 crash prediction study correlated MVR violations with insurance claims. The results give a clear indication as to which violations increase the odds of a claim down the road:
Once you know which trends to look out for, you can take better control of your risk. Take a look at “Failure to Signal Lane Change or Turn.” The increased probability of a claim within the next year after receiving this violation is almost 113%. Safety managers need to be aware of these violations as soon as possible so that they can and reduce the chance of a driver causing a crash in the future. If you’re just relying on pre-employment MVR checks and holding your breath until the next annual MVR pull, you are missing out on countless risk mitigation opportunities – as well as peace of mind.
Want to learn more about how you can prevent crashes before they happen? Click the link below to learn which violations you should look out for and how you can combat your drivers’ riskiest behaviors.
