Introducing Samsara Competitions: Building driver engagement for safer habits

Recognition keeps drivers behind the wheel, and safe habits keep them there longer. Fleets that only correct drivers when something goes wrong send an unspoken message: nobody notices the good days, only the bad ones. Over time, that gap between effort and acknowledgment is exactly what pushes good drivers out the door. That becomes a much harder problem to fix than any single piece of technology. In a recent Samsara survey of more than 70 fleet leaders at our 2026 Safety Summit, seven in ten ranked driver engagement, not technology, as their biggest obstacle to a successful safety program.

Technology alone doesn't change behavior or make drivers want to stay. Drivers need motivation, accountability, and recognition, built into the everyday rhythm of the job. That’s why we're excited to introduce Samsara Competitions, an easy way to turn safety and efficiency goals into structured, real-time contests that get drivers to engage with their own performance every day, and feel recognized for the progress they make.

When drivers see their scores, they work to improve them

Customers have long run competitions outside of Samsara to motivate drivers, but it’s usually a leaderboard on a whiteboard, a spreadsheet updated by hand, or a prize announced at the monthly meeting. These efforts work, but they're manual, hard to sustain, and give drivers no real-time feedback on where they stand. Competitions brings this workflow directly into Samsara: admins configure the competition in the dashboard, Samsara handles scoring and leaderboards automatically, and drivers see live standings right in the driver app.

Goettl Home Services put this to the test, running fleet-wide competitions across multiple regions focused on reducing mobile usage and tracking drivers’ Safety Scores. The result was a 97% decrease in mobile usage events, 73% reduction in accidents, and a 200% increase in defensive driving. Together, Samsara Recognition and Competitions allowed Goettl to provide a clear, ongoing incentive for drivers to keep their scores up.

See what Samsara Competitions can do for your fleet

Ready to turn safety into a competition your drivers want to win?

Individual and team formats: Run head-to-head contests among individual drivers, or organize drivers into two or more teams that compete on their combined average score. This is a natural fit for depots, shifts, or regions that already think of themselves as a team.

Flexible goals: Choose from multiple competition types like Safety Score, Mobile Usage, Following Distance, or Idling, or focus on a specific behavior with composite competition types like Harsh driving, Speeding, or Distracted Driving.

Real-time leaderboards and notifications: Drivers track their rank directly in the Samsara Driver App, with automatic notifications when a competition starts, when their rank improves, when they crack the top 10, or when they hit a personal best.

Built for scale: Bulk creation and recurring competitions mean a single setup can drive engagement for months, without an admin re-creating a competition every few weeks.

Better habits don't come from a one-time prize. They come from drivers who can see where they stand and stay motivated to improve, every day. Competitions makes that easy to run at scale. If you are an existing customer you can create a competition in your dashboard, today. Otherwise, please contact us to learn more.