The Myth of the Million Mile Safe Driver
by Jonathan Hubbard, CEO, SpeedGauge
Any professional driver who drives a million miles without an accident deserves respect and praise. Fleets know this, and they take the time to acknowledge the achievement. In fact, the “Million Mile Safety Bonus” is an important part of many fleet safety programs.
But should it be?
At SpeedGauge, we believe that all long-term drivers deserve our praise and recognition. It takes great self-discipline, focus and commitment to drive a truck, day after day for miles on end. Anyone who can maintain such professional focus year after year deserves praise.
That said, I would argue that statistically-speaking it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to assign special praise to the drivers who reach the million mile mark without an accident. In fact, statistical probability shows that high-risk drivers are very likely being recognized for accident-free driving thanks to simple luck, while safer drivers are passed over for years at a time without recognition simply because they haven’t logged the same mileage or enjoyed the same luck.
Don’t get me wrong, individual driver performance plays a huge role in the overall safety record of a fleet. However, the accident rate of an individual driver provides little insight into the safety of his driving behavior.
According to the US Department of Transportation, heavy trucks were involved in 275,484 police-reported crashes in 2010. If there are 3.5 million commercial drivers (and we assume everyone covers roughly equivalent mileage each year), the chances of being one of the unlucky few to be involved in a crash is less than 8%.
If we project that accident risk over time, we see it go up with mileage, but not as much as you might think:
year | miles driven | accident risk |
1 | 115,000 | 7.8% |
2 | 230,000 | 14.9% |
3 | 345,000 | 21.6% |
4 | 460,000 | 27.7% |
5 | 575,000 | 33.3% |
6 | 690,000 | 38.5% |
7 | 805,000 | 38.5% |
8 | 920,000 | 47.7% |
9 | 1,035,000 | 51.8% |
If we assume that the average driver covers 115,000 miles each year, it takes 9 years to cover 1 million miles. I wouldn’t want someone driving my car for 9 years before I can decide if he’s a safe driver. In fact, I want to identify unsafe drivers much sooner. The key to overall fleet safety is to reward safe drivers as soon and as often as possible, and coach unsafe drivers before it’s too late.
Granted, as time goes on, drivers’ odds of meeting an accident do go up. However, at the million mile mark, your average driver is still almost exactly as likely to have avoided an accident as to have ended up in one. If half of your drivers are “million mile safe drivers,” is it still a major distinction? It takes a million miles driven just to reach the same odds as a coin toss! A 50/50 chance of ...