9 Ways Dashcams and Telematics Can Lower Truck Insurance Costs

Using dashcams and fleet telematics for your business can help you improve your employees’ driving habits, indicate when you aren’t at fault for an accident, automate maintenance scheduling and respond to issues in real time. GPS vehicle tracking, dashcam footage and other technology can help prevent costly accidents and possibly earn you a discount on your commercial auto insurance rate.

Keep reading to learn more about dashcams and fleet telematics, how they work and how they can help lower your insurance costs.

On This Page

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  What Is Fleet Telematics?

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  How Do Telematics for Fleets and Commercial Vehicles Work?

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  Ways Telematics Can Lower Fleet and Truck Insurance Costs

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  1. Prove Fault in Accidents

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  2. Prevent Fraudulent Insurance Claims

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  3. Incentivize Safer Driving Behavior

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  4. Reduce Accident Frequency

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  5. Streamline Insurance Claims

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  6. Potential Insurance Discounts

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  7. Cut Fleet Maintenance Costs

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  8. Access to Real-Time Alerts

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  9. Enhanced Fleet Management Efficiency

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  FAQs

What Is Fleet Telematics?

Commercial fleet telematics is a form of technology that businesses can use to track the location and status of their vehicles using a combination of GPS, sensor data, dashboard camera footage and onboard diagnostic readings. This data can then be used to better visualize their employees’ driving habits, route efficiency and fuel usage, among other factors that can help business owners manage their fleet.

How Do Telematics for Fleets and Commercial Vehicles Work?

Fleet telematics systems gather and submit data points from your fleet vehicles over wireless communication to a server. Data gathered include mileage, where your fleet travels and your drivers’ driving habits (e.g., whether they speed, brake abruptly or how long they drive) and more. Different telematics software programs can then analyze the data and provide real-time insights for fleet managers, such as how efficiently drivers travel to their destinations and where your entire fleet is currently located.

Fleet managers can use telematics data to build risk profiles for their drivers, analyzing how likely they are to get into a motor vehicle accident.

At the same time, this data can help managers build targeted training programs for drivers who need to work on driving more safely. It can also inform you about the vehicle's status, including how soon it needs maintenance and if any mechanical issues should be addressed.

As we’ll discuss later, telematics can also be given to your commercial insurance company for risk assessments or as evidence when filing a claim.

Ways Telematics Can Lower Fleet and Truck Insurance Costs

Below, we’ll cover ways telematics can help lower your commercial fleet costs, including improving your employees’ driving records and leveraging discounts.

1. Prove Fault in Accidents

Whether due to someone attempting to scam your company with an intentional accident or a disagreement between drivers, telematics can help assess who’s at fault. Using dashboard camera footage, insurance companies can get an unbiased view into who caused an accident. For example, if the other driver accused your employee of rear-ending them, dashcam footage showing them reversing and colliding with your employee’s vehicle can disprove their claim. Insurers can also use GPS tracking to help show if your vehicles were even at the accident scene.

2. Prevent Fraudulent Insurance Claims

Since telematics can help determine fault in accidents, it can also help prevent fraudulent insurance claims, as shown in our earlier example. While this may not directly impact your rates, fraudulent claims can increase premiums overall for all policyholders because they pull resources from legitimate claims and increase expenses for the insurance company, which results in increased rates.^[1]

3. Incentivize Safer Driving Behavior

Telematics can help keep drivers accountable for their behaviors, such as distracted driving. Drivers who know they’re being monitored with telematics may be more likely to drive safer, which can lower their risk of getting into an accident.

Improvements in behavior over time could even be rewarded, which may incentivize employees to self-correct unsafe habits on their own. Insurers reward clean driving records with lower premiums.

Because telematic data is typically delivered in real time, you can warn drivers about their behavior on the fly. For example, if your telematics software notifies you that a driver is braking too harshly or isn’t making wide enough turns, you can notify them immediately to fix the problem instead of waiting, which could save them from a potential accident.

4. Reduce Accident Frequency

Telematics can help reduce accident frequency, with trucks that use the technology experiencing a 50% drop in the number of collisions.^[2] Telematics allows you to review an employee’s driving habits over time so you can identify specific ways to improve. Telematics also gives them a reason not to take risks in the first place, such as driving while fatigued, as they can be monitored. Additionally, sensors in the vehicle can warn when other drivers get too close and could allow drivers to react and avoid collisions.

5. Streamline Insurance Claims

Telematics devices, like dashcams, can help provide evidence of what occurred during an accident and who is at fault. The more evidence points out the cause of an accident, such as a video of another driver swerving into one of your trucks, the faster the claims process can go. This can help you receive reimbursement faster and reduce the odds of a claim being denied.

6. Potential Insurance Discounts

Telematics may allow you to receive specific discounts with your commercial insurance company. Some insurers, such as Nationwide, offer a 10% discount on your commercial auto policy for enrolling in their telematics program.^[3] Keep in mind that some discounts may require you to utilize a telematics program exclusive to your insurer, which could require specific transmission devices to be installed into your vehicles.

You may also earn other discounts indirectly. For example, you could qualify for a good driver discount if telematics helps you and your employees avoid accidents and traffic violations. You could also use data gathered on drivers’ behavior to implement targeted safety programs, which could result in discounts.

7. Cut Fleet Maintenance Costs

Telematics can help inform you about vehicle health, including when to perform maintenance. Instead of getting maintenance done on a routine schedule, which may result in overpaying when it isn’t necessary, telematics can perform vehicle diagnostics to inform you when it's most cost-efficient to do so. For example, instead of getting your oil changed every six months, telematics can perform vehicle diagnostics to inform you when it's most cost-efficient to do so. In addition, telematics can help you avoid accidents that might otherwise be caused by issues with your company vehicle.

8. Access to Real-Time Alerts

Since telematics data is uploaded to servers wirelessly, it can usually be accessed at all times. This means your business can be alerted when an accident occurs and or help you respond promptly if one of your trucks experiences an issue. For example, you may receive an alert about critical vehicle engine data that a driver might not notice or otherwise ignore.

Proactive maintenance can help reduce more extensive repair costs if issues worsen over time.

9. Enhanced Fleet Management Efficiency

Telematics systems can help business owners better manage their fleet operations, helping with planning maintenance needs with automated scheduling. This can help you order parts as soon as sensors indicate they need replacement, which can speed up the repair process and reduce costs by not potentially paying expedited shipping fees for parts at a repair shop. It can also help manage warranty information and repair history, which can help improve maintenance efficiency.

Telematics can also help with route optimization based on expected mileage to your destination and traffic, speeding up your fleet’s travel and increasing fuel efficiency. For example, some customers insured by The Hartford who opted into telematics saw fuel consumption reduced by as much as 10%.^[4]