4 Smart strategies to earn stakeholder buy-in for video telematics

The American Transportation Research Institute reports that when businesses add dash cams, the footage exonerates their drivers in almost half of lawsuits. And according to FleetOwner Magazine, the average crash-related verdict against large trucking companies now exceeds US$20 million.

Boosting your company’s chances of avoiding a catastrophic monetary judgment might be compelling enough to persuade your leadership team—particularly when you consider that the right video telematics solution will be highly affordable.

And although your drivers might have understandable privacy concerns, our free guide to video telematics helps walk you through best practices for introducing the new technology in a way that can make them feel positive about it.

Here are four ways that video telematics can make an impact on your business and help you build a strong case for adding it to your fleet.

1. Demonstrate the potential savings from reduced crashes

We noted above that video telematics can provide compelling evidence to protect your business against the nightmare scenario: a large legal judgment after a major collision. By gathering your company’s historical vehicle collision data—number of crashes per year and injuries per collision—and applying trusted industry research to demonstrate your potential future savings, you can show your leadership team that this new technology can help bring down your fleet’s overall costs.

Additionally, research reported in Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) found that fleets saw a 34 per cent drop in crashes after installing dash cams. You can calculate 34 per cent of your company’s average yearly crash-related costs to show your executives how much money vehicle telematics could potentially save your business.

2. Use research to show how dash cams can increase vehicle ROI

Make the business case that adding vehicle telematics can help you gain more bottom-line value from your fleet. For example, you can use an ABI Research finding that commercial vehicle downtime costs the company an average US$760 per day. 

Because the right telematics solution will be continually monitoring your vehicles’ health, and alerting you to signs of trouble, your team will be in a better position to react quickly and fix small problems before they become downtime catastrophes.

3. Show how vehicle telematics could lower your fuel bills

Use industry research and your company’s average fleet fuel expenses to show the potential for direct, hard-dollar savings with dash cams. Research in the Commercial Carrier Journal, for example, finds that implementing a telematics solution (even without video) can help a business reduce fuel costs by 15 per cent because the system monitors and reports a driver’s speed, idling time, harsh braking, and other behaviors that directly affect fuel efficiency.

You can use that data point to show a potential for a 15 per cent drop in fuel costs or, what might be even more compelling, calculate the actual dollar savings on your future fuel bills.

You can also point out to your leadership team that by reducing your company’s overall fuel consumption, you’re also reducing your environmental footprint, which can positively affect your company’s public goodwill and brand reputation. 

4. Demonstrate dash cams’ ability to protect driver safety and well-being

There’s evidence to support a direct correlation between implementing video telematics and improving overall driver safety.

During a 2020 pilot program, for example, Amazon installed dash cams on a portion of its delivery vans to test their potential effect on driver safety. As the company later told Insider, Amazon delivery-van collisions fell by 48 per cent, stop-sign violations fell by 20 per cent, and distracted driving decreased by 45 per cent.

When Insider spoke with some of the Amazon drivers, many said that despite their initial privacy concerns, they believed the cameras encourage safer driving and could protect them. This point can help make your proposal for video telematics even more compelling: It will help improve your drivers’ safety, and your drivers are likely to recognize and appreciate that fact.

For more tips on building a strong business case for video telematics in our free guide, or speak with a TELUS video telematics specialist to find the right solution for you.