Not all accidents are created equal. While that may seem obvious, it may be more complicated than you think.
While every accident can impact your bottom line, DOT recordable accidents can have a major impact on your business. Here’s why.
What is a DOT Recordable Accident?
Carriers are required to keep records of an accident for three years after it occurs – the accident register and any copies of the accident reports required by the state or other government bodies. DOT recordable accidents are required to be recorded on accident reports. What kind of accidents are classified as DOT recordable?
- Accidents involving fatalities
- Accidents involving bodily injury that required immediately medical attention away from the scene of the crash
- Accidents that damage one or more vehicles enough to require it to be towed away
Regardless of who’s at fault, these accidents are DOT recordable accidents. The special classification is meaningful for reasons other than for the severity of the accident.
Why DOT Recordable Accidents Matter?
So why does it matter if an accident is labeled a DOT recordable accident? All accidents impact your insurance premiums in some way or another. Why is this classification so important?
DOT recordable accidents are used to determine your company’s safety rating: satisfactory, conditional, or unsatisfactory. During an audit, a formula is used to calculate the number of recordable accidents your company has had in the past year, per million miles driven. The formula looks like this:
# DOT Recordable Accidents x 1,000,000/# Miles Driven During Past 12 Months
The number of DOT recordable accidents is the total number for your company, and the total number of miles driven in the past 12 months is a total of all of your drivers’ miles. If the final number is higher than 1.5, your company can be given a safety rating of “conditional.” If you have other safety violations on the record, you could be bumped down to “unsatisfactory.”
The safety of your drivers and the number of accidents your company experiences each year isn’t just important for keeping trucks on the road and your insurance down. No matter who’s at fault, an accident involving one of your drivers can and will affect your bottom line.
You can’t prevent all accidents, but you can help keep your drivers safer. With the Gorilla Safety app, you have document storage capabilities to make sure pre-trip checklists are stored and available for drivers, an accident investigation tool that you can use when an accident happens, alerts for repairs not made, and the ability to track inspections. These things won’t stop everything from going wrong, but they can certainly help reduce your number of DOT recordable accidents.
If you’re ready to move to a more efficient fleet management system and give you and your drivers the tools to be safer out on the road, contact us at Gorilla Safety today.
