3 Incident Management Best Practices for Your Fleet

This article was co-authored by the experts at Avatar, National Interstate and Vanliner. Through our collaboration, we hope you learn some best practices to enhance your operation's safety culture.

Many fleets find themselves asking the same question: “Why are our insurance rates going up even though our performance is good?”

The answer is complicated. No one thing is causing rates to rise. It’s a multitude of factors, just like it is for your personal vehicle insurance or your health insurance.

Some of these elements are out of your control, but not all of them are. It is possible to get flat or single-digit insurance renewals.

“Best-in-class operators are going to get best-in-class pricing — across the board,” says Tim Brewster, VP for loss control, claims operations, and claims business analysis at National Interstate. So, what can motor carriers do to get best-in-class pricing?

Incident management is one area where many motor carriers can make an impact on their insurance rates by improving their processes, triaging faster and managing risk.

Why Motor Carrier Insurance Is Going Up

There are many reasons insurance is going up for motor carriers, including so-called social inflation, our litigious society, rising medical costs and increasing vehicle replacement and repair values.

Social inflation and our litigious society go hand in hand. Social inflation refers to the additional costs that come from societal and legal changes, such as the fact that there are more lawsuits, often paid for by third parties. Consider that in 2023 attorneys spent nearly $1 billion dollars on TV advertisements alone. Those ads not only recruit more plaintiffs; they influence the public’s (thus potential jurors’) perceptions of liability and verdict sizes.

It’s no secret medical costs are going up as well. There are more traumatic brain injuries and soft tissue injury claims than there have been in the past, in addition to more advanced medical procedures, which are costlier.

Vehicle and repair costs are more expensive than ever, too. There are more total losses than ever due to aging vehicles. Add to that increasing technician wages, more expensive parts due to tariff-related uncertainty and vehicles that are more difficult to repair because of technology, and it’s a recipe for expensive claims.

Incident Management Best Practices

At Avatar, we’ve identified several areas where motor carriers can learn to harness the factors within their control to prevent or slow rising insurance costs. Here’s a look at each of them.

1.    Fast & Mobile Triage

Your insurance company wants to know about losses immediately to establish rapport with the claimant and potentially settle the claim before an attorney gets involved and the claim amount skyrockets.

Best practices for fast and mobile triage include:

• Controlling the narrative: Ensure the facts of loss make it to the insurance company quickly; otherwise, you’ll risk inaccurate information, a delayed start to the investigation and the claimant obtaining legal representation, which could result in much higher claim amounts and a lengthy process.
• Making it easy to collect data and submit claims: Accidents don’t always happen while you’re sitting at your desktop computer. You need the ability to enter “first notice of loss” data into a structured form on your mobile device 24/7. Even better if it integrates with your existing systems to pull in known data and allows you to submit a claim with one click.

“Sometimes (motor) carriers think they're best equipped to manage that loss. But we handle thousands upon thousands of losses a year; we’re the team that you should be reporting it to … When we can make contact with that claimant and build rapport, we have a high success rate for settlement.” —Tim Brewster, National Interstate

2.    Prioritized Process Management

When a loss happens, stress is high. It's easy to skip steps and overlook important information, so you need a formal process you can easily execute to ensure you collect necessary data from the scene. Structure and consistency are key.

To ensure your incident management process is locked in, you need:

• Consistent data collection: Make sure no one forgets to capture or upload vital details, such as other vehicle information, all in a centralized system. Large files like photos and videos are a key part of your data collection. Ensure you have unlimited storage and easy sharing capabilities.
• Prioritized task management: It’s best to start with your highest severity incidents and work your way down — don’t just go in chronological order.
• Documentation management: Ensure you can prove you’ve done your due diligence when it comes to accident reviews, coaching, event based training and/or discipline.

“When you digress from your process, that's when you get yourself in trouble. And unfortunately, you see a lot of that take place in the market because (safety directors and drivers) are not experts at losses.” —Tim Brewster, National Interstate

3.    Risk Prevention & Cost Reduction

It’s important to respond appropriately when accidents happen, but it’s more important to help prevent them from happening in the first place. Best-in-class carriers centralize all their loss data and analyze it to reduce the likelihood of future incidents and losses.

To mitigate risks and reduce claims and costs, you want:

• A dashboard that prioritizes incidents based on severity: Your most severe cases to address should be apparent at a glance so you know where to target your attention.
• Trend spotting ability: In a centralized system, the data will inform you where to focus prevention campaigns, in terms of accident types, locations, driver tenure or other categories.
• Accident register export ability: Wouldn’t it be nice to easily meet your annual FMCSA and insurance company requirements with an exportable accident register, rather than cobbling together another spreadsheet?

“We've had clients where they've identified most of their losses are within the first two or three months of employment. Well, that leads them to evaluate their hiring practices, their onboarding practices, (and assess) how are they monitoring people throughout the first 90 days?” —Tim Brewster, National Interstate

If you’re still using spreadsheets or flying by the seat of your pants when it comes to incident management, it’s time to consider a centralized incident management software for motor carriers that will help you triage effectively, prioritize process management, easily share files and ultimately reduce costs and mitigate risks. Learn more about Avatar’s Incident Management features within DriverHub or schedule a demo today.

The information presented in this publication is intended to provide guidance and is not intended as a legal interpretation of any federal, state or local laws, rules or regulations applicable to your business. The loss prevention information provided is intended only to assist policyholders in the management of potential loss producing conditions involving their premises and/or operations based on generally accepted safe practices. In providing such information, National Interstate Insurance Company does not warrant that all potential hazards or conditions have been evaluated or can be controlled. It is not intended as an offer to write insurance for such conditions or exposures. The liability of National Interstate Insurance Company and its affiliated insurers is limited to the terms, limits and conditions of the insurance policies underwritten by any of them. National Interstate Insurance Company, 3250 Interstate Drive, Richfield, OH 44286.