Generally speaking, 50 percent of your drivers are considered “low-risk,” meaning they have a clean record and valid licenses. Another 40 percent of drivers are “at some risk” – they may not have squeaky clean records, but they’re not a major concern either.

It’s the final 10 percent of your drivers that are responsible for 40 percent of your crashes, translating to a loss of profit, increased equipment downtime and lack of employee retention.

Despite these compelling facts, there’s still doubt over whether to employ driver risk monitoring and with actionable safety having the ability to make or break your company’s risk efforts, it prompts the question – what’s the right answer?

Simply put, you’re always safer having visibility into risk. Although it sounds biased, it isn’t just SambaSafety’s opinion. Many of the country’s top trial lawyers defending companies involved in catastrophic accidents, share the opinion that companies are better off with line of sight into risk.

Why would someone incorrectly conclude that the risk of knowing outweighs the benefits?

 

There’s focus on the exception rather than the rule.

Willful ignorance is no longer a valid argument this day and age. The rule is that companies need to identify and mitigate risk, while the exception is that critical information works against you. This is a false concern though, as public records are readily available. It’s hard to believe that any company could claim didn’t have line of sight into risk.

This isn’t comparing probabilities.

Compare the benefits of the rule versus the exception. The goals are the same – to prevent crashes and reduce risk for the company. In terms of probabilities, drivers with bad records are more likely to be involved in a crash. What is the likelihood that a company is worse off continuously monitoring their drivers? 

There’s a tendency to catastrophize.

Catastrophizing is an irrational tendency to make a catastrophe out of a hypothetical situation that hasn’t yet occurred, worrying that the failure to act on known information puts the company at risk. Thinking this way is irrational, exaggerates risk and ignores the benefits of combatting risk through steps such as continuous driver monitoring

There’s no comparison – actionable information is the best way to reduce risk. You’re always better off armed with information helping to combat and minimize risk. Improving safety, preventing incidents and saving money on claims outweighs not knowing by a longshot.

Take the first steps toward understanding your risk and find out your driver safety score.

Thoughts From The Top

  • John Diana
  • General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, SambaSafety

To learn more about how continuous monitoring can transform your driver risk, download our white paper today.