Truck driver behaviour, specifically ‘near misses’, drives crash risk, not miles driven, according to a report by Motive 2026 AI Road Safety.
As reported by Trucknews.com:
Instead of relying on crashes and insurance claims as the primary safety metric, fleets will soon be increasingly relying on other metrics like near-collisions, fatigue, distraction and other behavior-based signals captured by AI dashcams when evaluating safety risks, according to the Motive report.
For every collision, fleets now see seven near-collisions. And these near-misses, Motive says, are becoming the most important leading indicator of risk, because they allow safety managers to intervene before someone is hurt or equipment is damaged.
This leads Motive to say that higher mileage does not equal to higher collision risks.
“Our data suggests that what has changed isn’t driver behavior – it’s visibility,” said Hamish Woodrow, head of strategic analytics and data engineering at Motive, in the report. “If anything, driving is getting harder, with more distraction from cell phones, denser traffic, and tighter delivery pressure. The risk has always been there. What’s different now is that AI allows organizations to see it earlier, coach drivers more consistently, and intervene before unsafe behavior turns into a collision.”
Motive’s report analyzed 1.2 billion hours of data from commercial drivers’ Motive AI Dashcam across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. And one of the findings was that even though transportation and logistics fleets drive the most miles, they also have the lowest overall collision rates. Meanwhile, industries like agriculture, waste and recycling, and field services face far higher collision exposure, even though they typically operate fewer highway miles. But drowsiness is a strong predictor of collisions, remaining a main contributor to crashes across all fleet and service types.
Full report here.