Dangers of Speeding and Aggressive Driving

When commercial drivers speed, they do more than jeopardize lives. They also leave the companies, organizations and agencies that hired them open to liability. (To learn more, read our free white paper, ROI for Real-time Driver Coaching.)

In addition to legal liabilities, speeding hits your bottom line with:

• higher insurance premiums
• higher CSA scores
• lost productivity due to frequent roadside inspections
• fuel inefficiencies

Speeding is preventable.

Data-based insights are hard to dispute. With the right telematics provider, teaching your drivers to slow down may be easier than anticipated.

Seeing driving behaviors in black and white tells you what’s really going on so you can:

• proactively address speeding
• lower CSA scores
• lessen the frequency of roadside inspections
• reduce insurance premiums
• prevent speeding-related incidents that cause injuries

First, let’s look at how speeding impacts lives and your company’s bottom line. Then, let’s look at how working with the right telematics provider and implementing the right technology reduces speeding across your fleet.

Slowing down saves lives.

Every year, thousands of people die in a fatal crash involving a large truck or bus that was going faster than the posted speed limit. Recent studies and statistics show exactly how many.

Fatal crashes involving large trucks that were speeding	2015	3,622
	2017	4, 237

Per the same report, from 2015 through 2017, more than 30% of fatal accidents involved large trucks that were speeding through the common posted speed limit of 50 to 55 mph. And, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, speeding was a factor in more than 25% of crash fatalities since 2008.

Behind those numbers are families, friends, drivers and companies, who are all affected in the aftermath. Not all accidents are avoidable, but fatalities caused by speeding are—and should be—prevented through proactively safer driving.

Slowing down can lower CSA scores.

Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) scores are one way in which the FMCSA holds your company and your drivers accountable for operating safely. Unsafe driving and crashes are two of the seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) used to calculate CSA scores—speeding contributes to both.

A high CSA score means a high number of violations. Remember, speeding accounts for 13% of large truck violations. Speeding 15 mph over the posted limit within the first six months adds 30 points to a driver’s personal score. And violations count toward CSA scores even if the commercial drivers remain in service, avoid a warning or avoid a citation.

The FMCSA identifies carriers with high CSA scores as needing more intervention to operate safely. The higher your company’s CSA score, the more often your vehicles will be pulled over for roadside inspections. Time spent during an inspection is lost productivity and lost time on your drivers’ logged hours of service.

Even with the overhaul to CSA and move to the new Item Response Theory (IRT) model, speeding violations will still contribute to higher scores.

Insurance carriers also notice high CSA scores. Unsafe driving means higher premiums, and speeding is a clear indicator of unsafe driving.

Slowing down reduces costs.

Fuel is one of the largest expenses of virtually any motor carrier. Fuel economy is critical but filling up a large commercial vehicle costs big.

Speeding wastes fuel. The faster a vehicle goes, the more fuel it consumes. For example, on average, a semi-truck consumes an extra 132 gallons of fuel when it goes an extra 10 mph.

Yes, making delivery on time is important, but speeding wastes fuel and therefore money.

Reduce speeding throughout your fleet.

Safe fleets need safe drivers behind the wheel—and safe drivers don’t speed. You can’t ride with every driver on every trip to monitor speeds and habits. However, working with the right telematics provider to implement the right technology sets you up to get the insights necessary to proactively address speeding, across your fleet and for each driver.

Start with the right reports.

Your telematics solution should include an online portal that provides a real-time picture of your fleet operations. Through this portal, monitor your fleet and its details, including certain aspects of drivers’ performance. For example, Ground Traffic Control® features reports that provide data around speed-specific activities and driver behavior.

Posted Speed

Ensure vehicles and drivers are not exceeding posted speed limits. If they are, view when, where and the percentage of time they were speeding for each trip. Use graphical and numerical analysis for driver behavior over time. And refer to automotive or truck speeds based on the type of fleet vehicle.

Speed Report

Resolving speeding complaints just became easier. View all incidents at a high level, and view asset activity for one or all assets’ speeding events. Track when and where vehicles exceeded a certain speed. Easily track the maximum speed for each vehicle over a period of time to make sure company policy is being enforced.

Zonar Coach™

Zonar Coach is our in-cab, real-time driver coaching solution. Through Ground Traffic Control, monitor your fleet drivers’ performance, including breaking, tailgating, hard cornering—and speeding. Coach recognizes live speed signs and records video of the infraction for driver and office to review.

Put these reports to work for you.

Create zones.

Establish zones where your fleet vehicles travel. For each of these zones, create additional policies or restrictions based on areas with frequent speeding tickets. Doing so means you can target problematic locations and further enforce the need for drivers to obey the posted speed limits in those areas.

Also, set up alerts so dispatchers and safety administrators are notified when a driver exceeds a posted speed or performs another key, unsafe driving behavior.

Look for behavior patterns.

You know the phrase “squeaky wheel gets the oil”? Every fleet has drivers who could use some coaching. But consistently safe drivers deserve to be rewarded, too. By regularly monitoring drivers’ performance and paying attention to the data your telematics solution provides, you can do both.

• Gamify driving performance by rewarding safe drivers and drivers who continually improve.
• Identify and coach (not punish) drivers who have the most speeding infractions to be safer.
• Change the game every month to help drivers improve on various areas of safe driving.

Put a coach in the cab.

In-cab, real-time driver coaching helps drivers slow down and be safer. Zonar Coach is a proactive approach designed for drivers. Instead of recording drivers, Coach features a forward-facing, intelligent dashcam that scans the road for traffic conditions and posted speed limits. If the driver exceeds the speed limit or performs one of six other unsafe behaviors, Coach provides instant, audible feedback.

These in-cab, audible alerts give drivers the chance to slow down and take corrective action before they cause an accident or get pulled over.

Choose the right telematics provider: Zonar.

Safer drivers mean safer fleets and a healthier bottom line. Change your company culture around safety with actionable, data-based insights. Choose a telematics provider that’ll be your partner and keep your best interests in mind as you work together to reduce speeding. We’ll work with you to identify and implement the right technology, so you get the facts around your drivers’ speeding habits.

About Zonar

Founded in 2001, Zonar has pioneered smart fleet management solutions throughout trucking and vocational industries. Zonar helps fleets of all sizes maximize the use of their assets with technology solutions dedicated to improving compliance, efficiency, maintenance, safety, and tracking. Cloud-based services with open APIs drive Zonar’s smart fleet solutions by making it easy for fleet owners and managers to stay connected to their fleets and operators to dispatch. Headquartered in Seattle and part of the Continental AG family—a global leader in automotive technology— Zonar also has a Technology Development Center in downtown Seattle, a regional office in Cincinnati and a distribution center outside of Atlanta.