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Where the Money Really Goes: Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Fleet Safety
Every fleet and operations leader wants to make informed decisions about safety investments, but the real costs often go deeper than expected. While collision counts and repair bills are easy to quantify, many of the most significant safety-related expenses are harder to see and harder still to track. By looking beyond the obvious and understanding the full financial picture, fleet leaders can uncover powerful new opportunities to protect their people, their budgets, and their bottom line and safety can shift from a cost center to a profit driver.
What’s Easy to Measure
Counting Collisions
One of the simplest and most widely used safety metrics is collision counts. Often collisions are normalized to distance traveled as an exposure metric and tracked as recordable accidents per million miles driven (CPMM in the US, or collisions per million kilometers internationally). It gives fleets a consistent and objective benchmark to measure safety performance over time, allowing teams to monitor progress, identify trends, and benchmark against peers or industry standards. Because it’s tied to distance traveled, this metric adjusts for fleet size and utilization, making it especially useful for comparing performance across different divisions, vehicle types, or operating regions.
It’s important to note that distance as an exposure metric is not perfect: rush hour trips represent more exposure than low traffic trips, and urban miles are more dangerous per mile than highway miles. That’s why some urban fleets use metrics of per hour or per stop, but normalizing by distance makes it easier to compare across fleet types and usage profiles (e.g. service fleets vs. delivery fleets)
Another cause of inaccuracy in frequency statistics that fleets keep are differences in reporting standards and data sources. Some fleets count backing incidents as incidents rather than collisions, some fleets count preventable accidents only and not all collisions (more on this in a later blog post, but in our experience good drivers can avoid 80% of collisions deemed non-preventable, suggesting that the “preventable” criteria are too narrow; for example a good driver can often prevent a collision resulting from someone else running a red light). Many fleets also underreport because drivers or even managers want to avoid trouble or meet their safety goals. This results in undermeasuring risks and is a missed opportunity to prevent collisions and change behavior. In many cases when accurate systems are used, we see the number of collisions during a calibrated baseline measurement double or triple what was reported before. In fact it is not unusual for a fleet that reports five collisions a year to actually have five in a quarter.
Repair Invoices
Beyond tracking collisions, another category of safety-related cost that is easy to quantify is vehicle repair. Every incident typically generates a paper trail of invoices, making repairs one of the most straightforward and visible expenses in fleet operations.
Rising repair costs are already showing up in the real world. For example, electronic control unit (ECU) pricing rose by up to 18% in 2025 due to supply chain and tariff pressures, and one fleet operator reported a $200,000 repair estimate for a hydrogen truck’s sensor-damaged fuel cell after a low-speed collision.
While these numbers may seem manageable individually, they point to a broader trend: maintaining a fleet is becoming more expensive over time. Repair costs have been rising even more rapidly than other costs in many countries due to increases in both repair labor and parts. The cost of parts is being impacted as recent model vehicles have more electronics and, in particular, more sensors on the periphery (e.g. radars or ultrasonic sensors or cameras) that have to be placed on or just above the bumpers or side mirrors to give the best view. This placement means they are often damaged in even moderate impacts that historically caused minor damage. Moreover, electronic components often have to be replaced outright, versus steel bumpers or fenders that can be repaired. Failing to account for these steady increases can leave budgets tight and make unexpected incidents even more financially disruptive.
The Hidden Costs That Make the Difference
If you’re only tracking events or what’s billed, you’re missing potentially significant costs. These hidden costs, from liability exposure to lost productivity, can quietly outpace even your biggest repair invoices.
Lost Time on the Road
When vehicles and drivers are sidelined, deliveries are missed, productivity drops due to missed service calls or stranded passengers, and revenue slips away. According to recent industry data, even a single day of unplanned downtime can cost between $448 to $760 per vehicle, not just in repair expenses, but also through lost business opportunities, rerouted schedules, idle labor, and strained customer relationships. For some large delivery fleets, a single minute of extra time can be millions of dollars fleetwide. An extra service call made possible by better routing or scheduling or avoiding a traffic jam can generate revenue that dwarfs repair costs.
Liability That Goes Beyond Your Fleet
Collisions don’t just impact your own vehicles, they can trigger property damage claims from third parties that carry unexpected and often underestimated financial consequences. Whether it’s another vehicle, roadside infrastructure, or commercial property, these incidents can result in claims ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle, depending on the circumstances and scale of the damage.
These payouts often fly under the radar because they’re processed by separate organizations, such as the insurance carrier, a risk department, or a third-party claims processor, yet they add up quickly, especially for fleets operating in dense urban areas, construction zones, or with frequent delivery stops. And unlike in-house repairs, you don’t control the scope or cost of third-party claims, which can include inflated estimates, administrative fees, and third-party adjuster costs.
Injury, Disability and Fatality Claims
Even more substantial than third-party property liability are third-party medical and bodily injury claims. These arise anytime a third party or passenger is injured, which can be due to direct contact with the vehicle (e.g., striking a pedestrian, which is one of the most expensive collision types), indirect injury (e.g., whiplash from getting rear-ended, which is one of the most frequent collision types while moving forward), or even the result of an evasive maneuver, such as a passenger getting injured due to automatic emergency braking that avoids the collision, but where the 0.7g braking force sends passengers flying.
Some fleet managers do not measure property and bodily injury claims, since they often come from a different budget; e.g., the risk team typically reports to finance, not operations, and insurance is usually budgeted centrally as a quasi fixed expense. Loss outcomes are harder to measure as they cannot simply be counted like collisions. In many cases, loss outcomes are only known months or years later, once medical bills or insurance claims are settled. They also vary widely for the same collision type depending on the severity of the injury.
A simple example is pedestrian strikes: at less than 10 mph, the impact may result in just bruises, scrapes or possibly broken bones, but if the pedestrian’s head strikes the curb or vehicle, much more serious brain trauma can result. At above 45 mph, a pedestrian is unlikely to survive.
This leads some fleets to believe they can only control frequency (i.e., collisions per million miles), not severity (injury and financial loss outcomes), but this is not always correct. We will devote a later blog post to how it’s possible to systematically reduce severity as well.
For now, it’s important simply to remember that if you don’t track third-party liability and injuries, you are potentially missing over half the true costs of your fleet safety record. Most fleets will know their most common collision type. This is generally one of: 1) backing into stationary objects, 2) close-quarter maneuvering/parking, or 3) animal strikes in rural areas/highways. While these may represent 40–50% of collisions, they typically account for only 6–8% of total collision damage or loss.
Conversely, vulnerable road user (pedestrian and bike) collisions typically represent less than 2% of all collisions, but, for urban fleets, account for 60% or more of total dollar damage.
“The biggest cost is often third-party liability. It’s not your own damage, but lawsuits, claims that are filed by others for damage you did to them—and of that, the injuries of third parties are the biggest cost.” — Stefan Heck, CEO, Nauto
Cost of Driver Injuries
Just like third party bodily injury claims, injuries to drivers can account for a significant portion of total fleet losses if your drivers are employees, often between 30% and 40%. This includes medical expenses, workers’ compensation, wage replacement, lost productivity, and the impact on team morale. Injury collisions have also been reported to be one of the top causes of driver churn. Workers’ compensation claims from vehicle-related incidents average $90,914 per claim, but the true cost extends far beyond that. These expenses are frequently buried in HR, benefits, and insurance budgets, making them harder to see but no less damaging or costly. More than half of collision-related injuries lead to missed work, further driving up costs through disability coverage, health insurance claims, and paid sick leave. Prevention, early intervention, and driver wellness programs are essential—not just for safety, but for controlling both visible and hidden costs across your operation.
“Repairs are really less than a quarter of the true cost. It’s the third-party injuries and your workers’ comp that are the much bigger costs. When you add everything up, your true loss cost is usually two to three times bigger than you thought.” — Stefan Heck, CEO, Nauto
Legal Fees
Not all collisions end with only a repair invoice; some end in court. As litigation targeting commercial fleets becomes more aggressive, legal expenses have emerged as one of the most unpredictable and financially damaging outcomes of safety incidents. Recently, a new term arose to denote collisions with more than $100 million in damages — “thermonuclear verdicts” — used when incidents involve damaged infrastructure or multiple fatalities.
In April 2024, a transportation company in Texas settled a collision-related injury case for $7.5 million. The vehicle damage cost less than $25,000, but by the time the case closed, the company had spent over $600,000 in legal fees—from attorney retainers to depositions and expert witnesses. One year later, their insurance premiums shot up by 30%, compounding the financial fallout.
Fleet-focused litigation isn’t rare, it’s rising. With plaintiff attorneys routinely pursuing high-dollar settlements, especially when documentation is weak or driver safety records are shaky, legal fees now represent a critical risk factor that can far exceed the visible costs of a crash.
Given the magnitude of the payouts, a single large “nuclear verdict” (defined as any judgment or settlement exceeding $1 million) can dwarf not only repair costs, but even routine third-party liabilities. Because of the confidentiality of settlements and the sensitivity around legal discovery, especially when it exposes budgeted reserves or legal strategies, many fleets do not formally track these costs. Instead, they often get buried in general legal budgets or labeled as “exceptional cost” items in financial reporting.
For smaller fleets (e.g., 50 vehicles), a single lawsuit might represent an exceptionally bad year. But for large fleets operating thousands of vehicles, the law of averages ensures that major claims become a regular occurrence. Depending on risk exposure, anywhere from 1 in 20 vehicles (for safe fleets) to 1 in 3 (for riskier fleets) may be involved in a collision annually.
If you operate a large fleet, you should capture a rolling 3-year average of legal and settlement costs as part of your safety and risk metrics. Some organizations do this by categorizing collision types and implementing a chargeback system that allocates legal and loss costs to operational units. Others measure severity as a second key metric alongside frequency — especially by flagging “severe collisions,” often defined using federal standards (e.g., any incident involving hospitalization, fatality, or a vehicle tow-away).
Cost of Driver Turnover
When drivers leave after a safety incident, or because safety bonuses are missed, the financial impact goes far beyond one salary. According to the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, the average total cost to replace a truck driver is $8,234, with some companies reporting turnover expenses as high as $20,729 per driver.
Conclusion
Fleet safety isn’t just about avoiding bent metal; it’s about preventing the silent financial hemorrhage that happens when injuries, litigation, downtime, and turnover aren’t accounted for. While collision counts and repair bills are the most visible line items, they represent only a fraction of the true cost picture. Untracked liabilities, whether they show up months later in an insurance settlement or quietly pile up in lost productivity or injured team members, can be two to three times more expensive than what’s reflected in traditional metrics.
Next in this series, we’ll help you uncover the full spectrum of fleet safety costs, from the ones buried in legal budgets and HR systems to those hidden in plain sight. We’ll share practical ways to track, allocate, and ultimately reduce those costs so safety becomes a source of savings, not just spending.
