Six safety tactics fleet managers are using to protect their drivers

Last month, Samsara hosted over a dozen fleet managers at our European HQ for our first UK Safety Summit. 

The attendees worked in very different industries, and ran their fleets in various corners of the country. But everyone in the room had one thing in common: if something goes wrong, the buck stops with them. With so much skin in the game, the conversation yielded a lot of practical insight into what good safety practice looks like in 2026.

1. Recognition works better than enforcement

Most people in the room use in-cab cameras as part of their safety programme. These setups can notify drivers if they’re braking too hard, following too close to the vehicle in front, or all sorts of other risky behaviours. 

Everyone agreed that getting the psychology right is the hardest part of a camera-based safety scheme. Your drivers want to work without feeling like they’re being harassed or spied on, and that initial buy-in period is where safety programmes live or die. 

The most consistent piece of advice in the room: don't switch on the negative-event alerts first. Instead, lead with those features that give drivers positive recognition for good habits. Doing this the other way around can make drivers resent the tools that are there to protect them. 

One operator told us about his “reward-first” approach to in-cab notifications. He turned on recognition features from day one, with drivers earning kudos for good driving before a single fault alert went live. Another operator rewards drivers who stay in the green by entering them into a monthly random draw for a £200 voucher. The prize itself isn't really the point. But it gets drivers checking their own scores, and ownership shifts from "something done to me" to "something I'm winning at." Once that baseline of trust is there, it’s much easier to get people onboard with alerts. 

2. Let drivers access their own footage 

You can tell drivers all you like about the business benefits of installing cameras. But you won’t get them onboard until they’ve seen evidence of how cameras can help them. 

One operator told us how he gave drivers months of notice, ran open forums for the awkward questions, and fitted cameras to the leadership team's own vehicles first to show solidarity. But it was only after he gave drivers free access to their own footage that the culture truly changed. When one of their drivers was in a serious crash that wasn't their fault, having that footage to hand allowed him to prove that he wasn’t just making a fake ‘whiplash’ claim. Word soon travelled around the depot like “stealth wildfire”. The drivers ended up selling the cameras to each other far more effectively than a policy memo could.

3. Data should be signal, not noise

The attendees were all wary of information overload. Managers don’t want to accidentally create “fighter pilot” environments within the cab, where endless bleeps distract and overwhelm drivers. 

The broad consensus was for a selective approach to in-cab alerts. Attendees recommended "turning the screw" on the sensitivity of specific alerts so that they only produce actionable signals. One manager even cross-references telematics with insurance and collision data to identify the exact precursor behaviors to major accidents. His team then calibrates the system to only trigger alerts for those highly specific parameters, filtering out the rest of the data. 

4. Remember there's a human behind the data point

This was the part of the summit that stayed with me most. Technology can capture a driver’s behaviour, but it’s on managers to ask what might be influencing it. That’s why many attendees spoke about how they go to great lengths to get the human context behind the negative trend before they take any action. 

One manager shared a story of one of his drivers, whose fatigue scores had climbed sharply for a couple of months. It turned out he had a newborn at home and had been getting very little sleep. Instead of penalising him, the manager adjusted his shift patterns so he could get enough rest. Data isn’t governance; it’s the raw material we should use to shape our company cultures around the realities of people’s lives.    

5. Get creative with fatigue

I'd never heard this one before: an operator running overnight shifts issued their night drivers with compression socks to ease the physical and circadian toll of long, low-movement runs. It's the kind of idea you only hear when you’re in a room with people solving the same problems from different angles.

6. Make coaching consistent - and credible

Inconsistent coaching is the bane of a successful safety project. That’s why one operator at the Summit is freeing up his local line managers' time in favour of a dedicated, company-wide coach.

The goal is to take the subjectivity out of the process and put everyone on a “level playing field”. By removing manager discretion, they can ensure a consistent, black-and-white approach for every driver, no matter where they’re based. 

One attendee shared a nifty rule in place at his depots: whoever is delivering coaching has to be able to operate that category of vehicle. It's hard to coach an HGV driver on a manoeuvre you couldn't make yourself. And everyone agreed on timing - the faster you coach after an event, the more it sticks.

The one question that summed it up

We asked the fleet managers to close on this: if you could only run three driver-safety campaigns for the next six months, which would they be? The answers clustered fast. Seat belts, mobile phone usage, and fatigue - with a good argument about whether distraction beats the lot. 

Managers all want the same thing - drivers home safe at the end of the day, and that’s why we think these focused, in-person meetings like the Samsara Safety Summit are so useful. We’d love to see you at our next Samsara User Group event in London on 16 July - you might find out that someone else has already solved a problem you’ve been struggling with.