Do you know how to proceed in the event of an accident? After all, you may need insurance coverage when you least expect it and, although it is not a complicated term, you need to know the types of accidents and how they affect fleet management and these negotiations.
Between the months of January and June 2023, the Federal Highway Police recorded 180 accidents per day on federal highways in Brazil. Of the last five years, it was the most violent semester, recording more than 32.000 accidents and 848 victims of traffic violence.
Therefore, to guarantee the safety of drivers, reduce the general risk of accidents and waste of resources, managers need insurance and, consequently, the accident will be present.
For business owners, having insurance for their vehicle fleets saves time, money and hassle, eliminating the need to purchase individual plans.
Thinking about the difficulties faced by managers, we have gathered the main information about the accident to help bring more safety and productivity to your light fleet management.
What is sinister?
How does the claim work?
What are the procedures in case of an accident?
What are the types of claim?
What are the claim classifications?
Why does the accident impact fleet management performance?
Telemetry enables a 75% reduction in the number of infractions and claims
What is sinister?
According to Private Insurance, the claim refers to the occurrence of accidents that are covered, during the period of validity of the insurance.
For example, let's say that one of your operation's vehicles is involved in a traffic accident, the costs can be covered by the insurance company, avoiding further losses. But this will only happen if it is provided for in the plan's coverage.
However, there are cases that are not covered by certain insurance policies, such as theft and theft. As it is not specified in the policy, it is not considered a claim. Therefore, there is no financial compensation.
In this sense, fleet managers need to prevent accidents from occurring with their vehicles as much as possible and, to do so, they must pay attention to some details:
- Creating a fleet policy
- Driver training
- Up-to-date maintenance
- Route planning
- Occurrence record
Thus, the manager manages to maintain greater control over the vehicles in the fleet and, in case of any unforeseen events, he will be prepared for it.
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How does the claim work?
In summary, we have two ways of receiving compensation from the insurance company in the event of an accident, partial compensation or full compensation.
The criterion that defines a claim as a partial or total loss is related to the repair and repair costs:
- If it is less than 75% of the vehicle's value, it is characterized as a partial loss
- If it is equal to or greater than 75% of the vehicle's value, it is classified as a total loss.
Vehicles with insurance that are stolen or stolen and are not located are generally fully compensated. On the other hand, if damage is found before compensation, a new analysis is carried out, following the criteria above.
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What are the procedures in case of an accident?
Imagine the following situation: a vehicle from your fleet management was performing a service when it was hit by a motorcycle.
First of all, it is essential to check whether or not there are any victims and make sure that injured people receive the necessary medical care.
From now on, It is necessary to contact the insurance company and see what is covered by the contracted coverage. In fact, it is recommended to contact the company immediately.
This way, after the claim has been reported to the company, the center responsible for dealing with bureaucratic issues will contact the person responsible for the claims to understand the situation.
With this, the company continues with the process to organize all the information relating to the case reported by the customer, considering it to be an accident situation.
First, damage is determined with a campaign inspection and police report.
Next, we have the regularization phase, document inspection, analysis, conclusion of the process and settlement, where compensation will or will not be made to the insured.
But, after all, What to put in the claim description? It serves to report the events that occurred. Therefore, the advice that insurance brokers give to those who have experienced some type of unforeseen event is to provide a faithful description, with as much detail as possible.
For example, if an accident occurs in your fleet management, instruct the driver to photograph the vehicle and the location where the accident occurred, record the name and details of the people involved, as well as the damage to the car.
Therefore, it is essential to be thorough at this point, as the insurance company will then analyze the report and confirm whether the statements are true, which may influence the receipt of compensation.
Check out the data that cannot be missing from your report:
- Date, address and time of occurrence of the accident
- Claim type
- Detailed description of the claim
- Personal data of all persons involved
- Description and photo of the damaged goods
- Identification of victims
- Data and contact of possible witnesses
As you noticed, It is also important to understand what types of accidents are. So, go to the next topic and find out how they work.
What are the types of claim?
Now that you know what an accident is and how to proceed if one occurs, let's understand the difference between the main types of accident:
- Collision: one of the most common types, which happens when there is partial damage or total loss of the car, with the possibility of partial or total compensation.
- Theft or theft: occurs when the vehicle is stolen or stolen, but not recovered. Thus, the insured can receive full compensation, if there is coverage.
- Damage to third parties: some insurance covers both damages suffered by the insured and material damages caused by third parties.
- Natural causes: when there is flooding, falling branches, lightning, fire or explosion.
In any case, managers need to monitor the type of insurance contracted to understand what is covered. This way, it is possible to guarantee greater security and assistance for operations.
What are the claim classifications?
In addition to the types of accidents, we also have damage caused to vehicles after an accident, which can be classified into:
- Small ride: are those that result from minor accidents or crashes and represent only a simple repair or replacement of components.
- Average mounts: in this case, there is a more serious accident, where the car suffers considerable damage.
- Big ride: the vehicle suffers irrecoverable damage and is unlikely to be driven again. It usually refers to damage to two or more structural components of the automobile.
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Why does the accident impact fleet management performance?
Although the accident is almost always an inconvenience for the insured, It is still necessary to rely on it to avoid greater losses.
However, there are some strategies you can use to minimize the stress caused by this procedure.
This way, understanding the process and having the information at hand before the problem occurs guarantees greater peace of mind at that moment. That's why, remember to inform your drivers how they should proceed.
After all, despite prioritizing preventive methods, accidents happen. So, your drivers must be trained to report an unforeseen event as efficiently as possible.
Have a fleet management system can help in these moments, because you can track your vehicles immediately or monitor your drivers in a simple and intelligent way.
Check out other benefits of having this technology in your operation:
- More safety for drivers and vehicles
- Reduction of maintenance and claims expenses
- Cost control per kilometers driven
- Greater productivity in operations
- Fleet location control
- Decrease in traffic accidents
As you can see, automating your management and bringing more technology to your operations can help reduce claims costs and prevent accidents.
Therefore, the best way to keep your fleet safe is to use a telemetry system like Golfleet.
After all, this tool allows you to have advanced indicators, dashboards and analysis reports that promote more accurate decisions in your management.
On the other hand, you can also create fleet policies and configure all company rules, track vehicles, view histories and have important information about runs.
Telemetry enables a 75% reduction in the number of infractions and claims
Companies that have fleets deal, on a daily basis, with various adverse situations, such as accidents caused by excessive speed. Therefore, it is a task for the fleet manager to find ways to make the fleet safer.
This is where telemetry can contribute a lot to, in addition to preserving drivers' lives, also reducing fleet costs.
It was with this intention that the Orguel Group became a Golfleet customer years ago, in 2015. The fleet of 140 outsourced vehicles moves throughout all regions of the country using telemetry, a technology that helped the company understand the driving profile of its drivers.
According to the company's fleet and travel administrative analyst, Marco Tulio Santerio Inocencio, “the way drivers drive directly affects the cost of the fleet, from fuel consumption to high accident rates, which greatly increases maintenance costs. and repairs.”
The Grupo Orguel analyst says that with the reports provided by the telemetry system, he realized that the profile of the fleet's drivers was very aggressive, and that there were several infractions for speeding.
“In 2017, we had a record of 172 km/h and this brought us even more attention to the problem”, says Marco Tulio. Since the year in question, the company has worked on campaigns to make its drivers aware of the importance of defensive driving.
With these actions, the number of events – accidents and infractions – which were 61.879 in 2017, had a significant decrease, and from January to October 2020 15.158 events were recorded, a reduction of around 75%.
“The struggle is daily and we still can and have a lot to improve, but without telemetry we would never know where we were and we certainly would not have been able to improve that scenario”, says the administrative analyst.
For these and other reasons, telemetry is an essential technology for fleet management, as it provides important information for the manager to act strategically.
“In analogy: if the fleet manager is the sailor, telemetry and technology are the compass; You can even reach your final destination without, but not without counting on luck”, explains Marco Tulio.
One of the features that stands out in these cases is Fleet Rec, which, upon detecting a possible impact, our equipment automatically generates an event on Golfleet.
With this, it is possible to analyze suspected accidents and collisions with complete and detailed information about speed and acceleration in 3 axes (lateral, vertical and longitudinal). Another differentiator of our fleet management system is that you can:
- View this data in a list
- Check the vehicle's route on the map
- Examine charts
- Have a reproduction of the last seconds that generated the suspected accident in 3D format
This combination of detailed data, advanced visualization and real-time notifications contributes to a more in-depth analysis of suspected accidents and, consequently, claims, enabling proactive responses.
In addition to the technical features, we have the practical benefits that Golfleet provides to fleet managers, such as better decision making and, ultimately, improving safety and operational efficiency.
Do you want to ensure more efficiency and profitability even in the event of an accident? Count on our fleet management system:
