Motor vehicle accidents have been declining.  What if they disappeared? It would remove a factor in over one third of work fatalities.  It would save around $2 billion in workers’ compensation claims.

A goal to eliminate all vehicular fatalities might be provocatively aspirational, but it is serious and well timed.  Safety technologies for trucks, cars and other moving equipment are advancing so quickly that elimination of all work related vehicle accidents might be a viable Year 2020 planning goal for safety professionals and insurers.

Celent, the information technology advisory firm, proposed a "provocative but plausible" scenario in 2012 for wide diffusion of telematics, collision avoidance tools, automated enforcement and robot cars.  It projected that by 2022 total property and casualty premiums would drop more than a quarter and auto insurance premiums by more than half.

Motor vehicle-related worker''s compensation claims are six times more likely to result in permanent total awards or death.  They account for half of workers compensation claims with subrogation.  They are three times more likely to involve a claimant attorney. 

In total claims costs, vehicle-related claims arise mainly from passenger cars, followed by trucking, and then by vehicles used at worksites.   

National figures on the incidence of fatal traffic accidents declined by about 2% a year (non fatal accidents, about 1%) since 1980.  The faster decline in non-fatal work injury rates over the same period, about 3% a year, might be attributed to the far greater safety controls at worksites.  The technology advances underway for driving are effectively extending onto roads the worksite tools of administrative and engineering controls.

Work related vehicle fatalities, however, have fallen at a much lower rate than 3% a year. This relatively slow pace may be the greatest barrier to saving worker lives today. Roadway work related fatalities in absolute numbers have not changed since 1992, defying huge work safety improvements elsewhere.  Had work related traffic safety improved at the pace of manufacturing safety for workers while driving, work deaths in 2012 about have been under 4,000 instead of 4,628.

Celent drew its scenario based on technologies already in place in 2012. Government action will drive this essentially public health challenge.  But the public is largely unaware of how much corporations leverage these technologies today.  

Workers' compensation regulators and insurers and employers possess superior knowledge about telematics, the central technology.  Celent defines telematics as "the creation and use of data regarding driving behavior that is stored in an onboard device." By the end 2014, these devices will reside in mobile phones and offer much cheaper and easier to use tools when driving for work or pleasure.

The driverless car is within a few years of popular use.  Some employers are already expert in robot vehicles, which have replaced many warehouse workers as these warehouses become "dark," no longer even requiring lighting.

Collision avoidance electronics help truck drivers today avoid accidents.  This technology is available only in higher priced personal cars in 2014.

Corporate investment in telematics, robot cars, and collision avoidances over the past five or so years yields important gains in soft technologies, such as insurance underwriting and cost-benefit analysis.  The most important soft technology gains are in human factors.  Employers monitor driver behavior in ways that leap over conventional moats of personal privacy, enhance safety awareness, and set driver expectations.  Employers have an invaluable know-how on how to move humans towards safer driving.

A merger of  employer experience with auto insurer innovations in the United States, Great Britain and Canada can make a big impact on both occupational and non-occupational driving.  

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) prodded courts and legislators to change driver expectations, laws and law enforcement.   In a roughly similar intensity, employers need to leverage their expertise in these available technologies in the messy worlds of driving behavior for public, as well as private, good.    

Further reading:
Celent. A Scenario: The End of Auto Insurance What Happens When There Are (Almost) No Accidents. May 2012

National Council on Compensation Insurance. Research Brief: The Role of Traffic Accidents in Workers Compensation—An Update. December 2012