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Transportation Analytics for Commercial Truck Collision Reporting

The transportation business is all about putting trucks on the road to deliver goods—and, as the miles roll by, there are sure to be some accidents along the way.

Of course, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) requires trucking companies to maintain an accident register for all accidents involving commercial motor vehicles.

But it’s also a good idea to have your own system to track and analyze your company’s truck accidents, as the consequences of commercial vehicle collisions are too significant to ignore:

• The human cost—fatalities and injuries
• Property damage—tractors, trailers, and the goods they haul
• Insurance claims, lawsuits, and higher insurance premiums
• Potential investigations, citations, and fines from regulators
• In some instances, negative publicity

You can keep paper- or computer-based records, organizing different types of files into folders—report forms, driver citations, insurance records, and so forth. But if all your accident reports are compiled in a searchable software database, you can gain valuable insights into emerging patterns, including:

• Unsafe drivers
• Dangerous roads or portions of roads
• Higher risk times of day or weather conditions
• Equipment problems

Syntelic’s Transportation Analytics software enables just such insights—and much, much more.

Transportation Analytics: Business Intelligence for the Trucking Industry

Our Transportation Analytics software takes input from other areas of your business—like route plans and truck tracking data (e.g., from ELD or OBD devices)—and allows you to manipulate the information to learn what you need to know when you need to know it.

For example, you can:

• Compare planned versus actual route data
• Track over, short, and damaged (OS&D) claims
• Track loading and unloading times
• See which routes are profitable
• Monitor driver performance with driver scorecards

Many transportation applications only provide a handful of static reports, perhaps in the form of a weekly data dump into a massive spreadsheet. Transportation Analytics gives you flexible, ad hoc reports where you can sort and filter your data by date, division, warehouse, route, and driver to drill down to the facts you need. You can use graphs and charts to identify trends, and you can set up dashboards that keep your most important reports at your fingertips.

Using Transportation Analytics for Truck Accident Reporting

Accident reporting in Transportation Analytics is simple. If there’s an accident, you fill out form fields attached to the route in question. You can customize the information you collect.

For example, you’ll probably want to record the categories required by the FMCSA for trucking accidents:

• Incident date and location
• The driver’s name
• The number of injuries and fatalities
• Whether any hazardous materials were spilled

You can easily add more fields for data, such as:

• Number of vehicles involved
• Driver’s license number, contact information, and insurance policy details for other drivers involved
• Weather and road conditions
• Time of day
• Whether the police were notified
• Whether a police report was created
• Whether your driver was cited for a traffic violation or charged with a crime
• Text fields (e.g., to write a summary of what happened)

You can also attach other documents related to the accident, such as:

• Police reports
• Insurance company reports
• Photos of the accident scene
• Dashcam video from the accident
• Results of post-accident FMCSA-mandated alcohol and drug tests

Any information you record about a truck accident in Transportation Analytics is accessible in two important ways:

1. By individual incident: If you need to review a particular crash, you can pull up the details all at once. Everything is already compiled in one convenient location.
2. By searching and reporting: Search by route, time of day, or weather condition—any detail you’ve included in your repository of truck accident reports. This allows you to spot trends you wouldn’t otherwise see and take preventive measures.

Experience the Synergy of Syntelic Software

Transportation Analytics is powerful on its own, but its usefulness is amplified when you pair it with our other applications:

• Route Planning: Generate optimized, dynamic route plans in minutes, automatically accounting for Department of Transportation (DOT) hours of service and other variables.
• Load Planning: Quickly create load plans that streamline loading, delivery, and compliance with DOT weight restrictions.

Together, Syntelic’s Route Planning, Load Planning, and Transportation Analytics applications equip you with tools for improving safety, customer service, and profitability. Our software is not one-size-fits-all; we tailor every implementation of our software to meet your company’s unique requirements.

To learn more about what Syntelic can do for your trucking operation, contact us today.