Driving data can provide a roadmap to safer behaviors
IN Partnership with
Nationwide’s Ken Anderson examines the disconnect between the fleet safety tools and data now available and the fleet risk management practices needed to turn them into better outcomes, while exploring what’s next for telematics, dashcams, and driver monitoring
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Fleet operators have spent years investing in safer vehicles. Yet many drivers believe other motorists have become more careless and are making driving a more dangerous activity.
Nationwide’s 2026 Driving Behaviors Survey found that commercial drivers are seeing sharp year-over-year increases in distraction and recklessness, with 77 percent now reporting more distracted driving around them than a year ago.1
That sits alongside federal labor data showing transportation incidents remained the leading cause of fatal occupational injuries in the United States in 2024, responsible for
38 percent of all workplace deaths, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.2
The findings reinforce the importance of prevention. Ken Anderson, technical director of business auto risk management at Nationwide, says the next step is making better use of the information fleets already collect. Used well, it can help identify and correct risky driving habits before they result in a claim.
Nationwide, a Fortune 100 company based in Columbus, Ohio, is one of the largest and strongest diversified financial services and insurance organizations in the United States. Nationwide is rated A+ by Standard & Poor’s. An industry leader in driving customer-focused innovation, Nationwide provides a full range of insurance and financial services products including auto, business, homeowners, farm and life insurance; public and private sector retirement plans, annuities and mutual funds; excess & surplus, specialty and surety; and pet, motorcycle, and boat insurance.
“Companies have to be careful that if this is their policy, they need to make sure they’re following it and not distracting the drivers”
Ken Anderson,
Nationwide
Published Aug 10, 2026
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“If you pulled an MVR in January and that driver had a serious violation or a license suspension in February, you go 11 months without ever learning about that as an employer”
Ken Anderson,
Nationwide
Why drivers feel less safe Nationwide’s survey helps explain why fleets are putting more emphasis on prevention. The objective is to identify risky driving habits early enough to intervene.
About half of the commercial drivers surveyed by Nationwide said they feel stressed while driving for work, and more than half worry about being injured or killed on the job. That’s not something Anderson believes is just a reflection of heavier traffic.
Congestion is certainly part of it. Roads have filled back up since the pandemic, and drivers are spending more time navigating traffic they increasingly describe as aggressive and unpredictable. Longer days behind the wheel add to the pressure.
Many companies have policies that prohibit distracted driving. At the same time, drivers say they’re still receiving calls or messages from supervisors while they’re on the road. Others report that the demands of their job pull their attention away from driving.
“Companies have to be careful that if this is their policy, they need to make sure they’re following it and not distracting drivers,” Anderson says. The costs of getting this wrong go well beyond the crash itself, he points out. A damaged vehicle cannot make deliveries or visit customers, which directly affects productivity. An injured driver may have to be replaced, which means recruiting, onboarding, and training a new employee.
A branded vehicle in a roadside accident can also draw media attention, creating a reputational problem a company did not account for. All of that sits on top of repair, fuel, and labor costs that are already climbing, making it more expensive than ever to keep a truck or van on the road.
Turning data into loss prevention Anderson thinks most brokers can add real value to accident prevention because the tools already exist to support safe practices. Telematics has been around for years, but what companies do with it has changed. Early adopters mostly wanted to know where a vehicle was, which was useful for dispatch and routing but not much else. Increasingly, fleets are mining the same feeds for driver behavior, including speeding, hard braking, and hard cornering, all habits that raise collision risk.
“What can we learn about unsafe driver behaviors and what safer behaviors we can coach drivers on to help reduce those dangerous behaviors?” Anderson says that is now the real question fleets are asking, since the drivers who are hardest on the accelerator and brake are usually the ones costing a fleet the most in fuel and wear, in addition to whatever risk they add on the road.
Dashcams have gone through a similar shift, evolving from a tool that documents driving issues to one that helps prevent unsafe driving. Anderson recalls a fleet he spoke with recently where drivers were initially nervous about the cameras being installed.
“Once the drivers understood they weren’t using it in a big brother way to get them in trouble,” he says, and instead “to identify what unsafe behaviors we are seeing among our drivers and what things we can coach the drivers on,” resistance faded.
Newer, AI-enabled systems push further still, watching the cabin as closely as the road, and Anderson is blunt about what happens when fleets don’t bother using any of it: “If companies have telematics and dashcam data and they’re not acting on it, they’re really not getting the best benefit of what they’re spending on that system. They could also increase their liability risk in the event of a claim if they are not acting on information they’re collecting.”
The payoff for actually using it is not abstract. Nationwide compared fleets in its construction book of business that were actively coaching drivers with that data against fleets using the same tools mainly for scheduling and found that the loss ratio for the engaged group was roughly 30 percent lower.
“We’re seeing it pay out in real results,” Anderson says.
There is a second gap he thinks most fleets have not closed: motor vehicle records. Companies typically pull a driver’s MVR once a year.
“If you pulled an MVR in January and that driver had a serious violation or a license suspension in February, you go 11 months without ever learning about that as an employer,” he says.
The company keeps sending that driver out every single day, having no idea anything has changed.
Seventeen states now run pull-notice programs that alert employers when an enrolled driver’s record changes, and commercial vendors offer similar ongoing monitoring.
What’s next Hardware is changing quickly too. Technology such as adaptive cruise control can now bring a vehicle to a full stop on its own, and forward collision warning paired with automatic emergency braking has been found to meaningfully cut rear-end crashes.
But Anderson highlights: “They’re not a replacement for safe driving. The drivers still have to be safe.”
Fleets already have more information than they did a decade ago, from telematics and dashcams to continuous motor vehicle record monitoring and increasingly sophisticated safety systems built into the vehicle. Businesses should make a habit of reviewing the insights these platforms deliver to help keep their workers and vehicles safe.
Nationwide can work with clients to help them interpret the information they’re already collecting, identify patterns that may warrant coaching, and reduce the likelihood that risky behavior becomes a costly loss.
Notes: 1. Nationwide 2026 Driving Behaviors Survey (news.nationwide.com, March 2026). 2. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 2024.
47%
60%
70%
38%
By the numbers: Driver stress
of company drivers feel stressed, exhausted, and frustrated while driving for work
worry that aggressive drivers around them could cause an accident
worry about being killed, hurt, or held liable in a collision, even though 89% rate their own driving as good or excellent
company drivers admit they are sometimes distracted themselves while driving for work
of all US workplace deaths in 2024 resulted from transportation incidents, more than any other cause
Sources: Nationwide 2026 Driving Behaviors Survey (news.nationwide.com, March 2026); US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 2024; Nationwide 2025 Driving Behaviors Survey, Company Drivers (news.nationwide.com, April 2025)
in
4
1
65%
71%
Dashcams: perception versus reality
Say dashcam use is mandated by their employer, up 27 points
of company drivers report their employer already uses continuous MVR monitoring
of police-reported rear-end crashes can be cut by forward collision warning paired with automatic emergency braking
Source: Nationwide 2025 Driving Behaviors Survey, Company Drivers (news.nationwide.com, April 2025); Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
50%
Up to