Understanding fleet risk is a challenge that fleet and safety managers in all industries struggle with. Your drivers are your most valuable asset, yet oftentimes fleet professionals lack the full context and visibility to identify high risk events and the drivers that need immediate or additional training and coaching.
With this in mind, Nauto has launched the next version of our driver risk scoring system, (VERA®) 3.0. We’ve incorporated new driver risk factors to provide fleet professionals with a comprehensive safety evaluation and scorecard. This holistic approach offers more granular details, empowering customers to better assess fleet risk, reduce behaviors that lead to collisions, and reduce costs.
What is a VERA Score®?
Nauto’s Visually Enhanced Risk Assessment (VERA®) summarizes all driving events and behaviors into one score and provides a way to keep track of your fleet driver’s safe driving over time. A VERA Score® is calculated on a per-trip basis, and is on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 being the best and safest driving performance.
What’s New in VERA® 3.0?
Nauto’s VERA Score® is now composed of these four sub-scores:
- Inattention Driving Score: This measures how long drivers are distracted, smoking, using their cell phone, or drowsy across all trips. We specifically added drowsy driving as it’s a serious problem and causes a threat not only to the driver, but to others on the road as well. The US Department of Transportation estimates that 100,000 accidents reported are due to drowsiness and/or fatigue. These crashes result in 1550 deaths annually (4% of traffic fatalities) and $12.5 billion in monetary losses.
- Aggressive Driving Score: This is based on the number of aggressive driving events detected during a trip: harsh acceleration, braking, and cornering. In addition, we’re also now factoring in the duration of tailgating events. In 2016, 47% of all motor vehicle collisions in transport were rear-end collisions, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Many of these incidents could have been avoided if drivers practiced less aggressive driving behavior and maintained safe following distance from the vehicle ahead. Because tailgating, or following too closely behind another vehicle, is a major contributor to collisions, it’s important we consider tailgating events as part of our driver risk evaluation.
- High Risk Score: Collisions are one of the most life-threatening and expensive issues fleet professionals deal with. With VERA 3.0, if our predictive model indicates that a driver with a past collision has a high likelihood of being in another collision in the future, such collisions, near collisions, and collision warnings will reduce the VERA Score of that driver.
- Traffic Violations Score: According to NHTSA, “In 2018, speeding was a contributing factor in 26% of all traffic fatalities.” This is a dangerous driving behavior that puts your drivers and others at risk of collision and it’s now a risk factor in VERA 3.0.
Benefits of Nauto’s Driver Risk Scoring System:
VERA® not only helps safety and fleet managers quickly identify drivers that need immediate or additional training, the system helps achieve the following:
- Scalable Coaching: For each driver, the AI-enabled driver risk scoring system prioritizes high-risk events and enables managers to document driver training discussions for accountability. This is built-in to the workflow which equips coaches with the tools to hold effective, efficient, and productive 1:1 driver training sessions to maximize their time and the behavior change impact on the driver.
- Full Transparency: Nauto’s fleet driver app provides drivers with the same visibility into their VERA Score® and video events as their managers. This empowers drivers to improve their behavior without the intervention of a manager, reduce losses, and streamline fleet operations.
- Effective Fleet Safety Program: Building driver trust and engagement with unparalleled access to high-risk and driver-initiated video events increases driver adoption, which is required for any successful fleet safety program. Enabling driver privacy, transparency, and empowerment is critical for any technology-enabled solution.
And We’re Not Done Yet!
At Nauto, we’re always striving to reduce collisions, improve fleet performance, and save lives. With our AI data and customer feedback in mind, we will continue to make innovations and provide first-to-market solutions for the most effective and comprehensive fleet and driver safety platform. Learn more
