Studying patterns in accident data can lead to improvements in safety by helping eliminate accidents, noted Geotab, a telematics solutions provider that processes over 2 billion telematics-based data sets daily from more than one million vehicles.
“By analyzing patterns in data on GPS, speed, engines, fuel consumption and more, commercial vehicle operations can improve safety,” said Tony Partheniou, senior embedded systems engineer. “There may be habits going on with your operators that could easily go unnoticed without stepping back and looking at the information for trends.”
To illustrate his point, Partheniou generated data points on patterns in accident events. The source of the data was the Geotab GO vehicle tracking device. The results, based on data collected over 10 months, included:
- Time from maximum speed to Impact shows a correlation with speed and how soon a driver is likely to be in an accident. In the sample, 29% of accidents occurred within one minute of the vehicle reaching maximum speed and 71% of accidents occurred within the first ten minutes of maximum speed.
- Time from start of trip to impact shows that a large number of accidents happen early on or at the start of a trip. In the sample, 33% of accidents occurred within the first 10 minutes of a trip and 54% of accidents occurred within the first 20 minutes.
- Speed before impact shows that 51% of accidents occurred below 40 mph in city driving conditions.
- Maximum speed of drivers in an accident shows that drivers going more than 60 mph at any point during a trip are more likely to be involved in an accident, even considering the maximum speed of some roads. In the sample, 32% of vehicles had a maximum speed above 70 mph during their trip in which an accident occurred.
“Telematics can bring even more to the table by helping unfold a larger view of fleet safety,” Partheniou stated. “Don’t be afraid to extrapolate your own fleet’s data to find these larger trends and share them with your drivers as part of your safety training and safe driving programs.”
