No one wants road accidents to happen, but when they do, fleet managers should be able to see what happened, why it happened, and who is responsible. The goal is to reduce, or ideally eliminate, preventable road accidents altogether.
This is where telematics comes into play — giving enterprises greater visibility into their fleet. However, technology alone cannot deter accidents.
At the “Building a World-Class Safety Culture” panel during the Geotab Connect 2025 conference in Orlando, Florida, senior safety experts shared best practices, especially around turning scorecards into actionable insights.
Safety first
First and foremost, all experts agreed that the ultimate goal at the end of the day is for every driver to make it back home safely.
“Safety means doing what we say we’ll do and doing what’s right on the road. Our drivers are like family, and we want them to get home to their families. That’s why safety is always our top priority — it’s a journey that never ends,” remarked Justin Bauder, national fleet manager for Canadian discount store chain Giant Tiger.
Operating nearly 200 Class 8 trucks across its 270 stores, the company went on a journey of having no data on the road to having insight in under a minute.
“We had an incident, and the driver saw the damage report come through. The driver busted up one of the fairings on the trucks, and I was able to go into GoAnalytics and then pull the video from the Geotab GO Focus AI safety sensor in 30 seconds,” he said.
“We had an incident where a driver damaged one of the truck fairings. The damage report came through, and I was able to go into GoAnalytics and pull the video from the Geotab GO Focus AI safety sensor in 30 seconds,” he said.
Bauder explained that, in the past, investigating such incidents would have taken far longer, relying on emails, photos, and incomplete information. Now, with access to raw data and video evidence, staff can skip much of the manual work and get to the root cause much faster.
For Gibran Sanfelice Lehmkuhl, Procurement Regional Head North America NPMS for Schindler Elevator, telematics is like a gym membership.
“Just having a membership doesn’t mean anything; you need to actually go to the gym, right? That’s where we are today. I’d say we’re going twice a week, maybe, but we need to build that routine and really make use of the data we have. I’ve got a team of two managing a fleet of 4,000 vehicles, so our partnership with Geotab really helps,” he said.
Risk management
At IT firm Telus, giving drivers an opportunity to improve before applying progressive discipline has yielded strong results, said Justin Quan, the company’s Business Consultant for Fleet Processes and Systems Transformation.
“From my experience in coaching drivers, a lot of it comes down to habit — and I’ll keep coming back to that,” he said. “When you can pull up telematics data and show where they were, where the speeding occurred, or when seatbelts weren’t fastened, that’s when you can begin making real improvements.”
Technology can certainly drive change, but building the right culture and mindset is just as important, noted Syed Elshamy, global director of safety for North American pest control company Rollins. His team applies a 4E approach: engagement, education, empowerment, and enforcement.
“Enforcement has a negative connotation, but it’s really about setting expectations and enabling success,” he explained. “What’s actually doable? Do people have the training and tools to do their jobs? Are they comfortable with what they’ve been taught, and do they really understand it? Those are the critical factors in making your processes work.”
Even with the right policies and technologies in place, Elshamy stressed, they’re unlikely to succeed without the right cultural infrastructure to support them.
Meanwhile, at Fisher Auto Parts, risk management is treated as a non-negotiable part of the business.
“In your safety field, you probably have everything lined up and looking good — then one incident happens, so you have to revise things,” said Joe Rader, the company’s Vice President for Risk. “That’s why risk management is our top priority. Our employees are our greatest asset. Physical assets are important, but they can be replaced. If we lose an employee or are responsible for interrupting someone else’s life, that’s a lot of risk management.”
He added that even forward-thinking companies will never be perfect, noting that setbacks can’t simply be written off with the hope of compensating for them later. That’s why the company closely tracks a range of metrics, and in his view, experience remains one of the most valuable tools for gaining insight and an edge.
APAC focus
Over in Asia-Pacific, Geotab recognises the region’s differences from North America in terms of technology adoption — particularly in telematics. Within APAC, Southeast Asia is reportedly trailing behind Australia.
“Fleets in North America are generally larger and operate in a more mature market, so the adoption of advanced technologies is further along compared to what we see in APAC. Even within APAC, Australia is ahead of many Southeast Asian markets,” observed Chris Martin, Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering APAC at Geotab, in a separate interview.
Australia’s higher adoption rate has a lot to do with the country’s vast geography and increasing fleet numbers, noted David Brown, Associate Vice President, Geotab APAC.
“Australia is a big lot of land with roughly 28 million people. It’s a huge bit of rock, so there’s a lot of area to cover and not a great rail infrastructure. Therefore, transport is used a lot to carry goods, food, and everything else, from east to west and north to south. The only cost-effective way of doing that is through trucks,” he said.
Brown also pointed to a recurring challenge in the country: limited cell coverage in remote areas, which disrupts GPS telematics functionality. Without coverage, he explained, vehicles cannot transmit data back to the cloud, leaving operators unable to see where their assets are or whether they’re safe.
To address this, Geotab offers an Iridium satellite communication box that plugs directly into the device. When a vehicle moves out of cell range, the unit switches to satellite mode, allowing fleet managers to maintain visibility through the Iridium network.
Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, Geotab is focusing on Indonesia and the Philippines, according to Ezanne Soh, its Senior Product Manager for APAC.
“Southeast Asia is still a relatively new market when it comes to telematics adoption. Compared to the rest of the world, there’s definitely interest and demand,” she said. “Right now, we’re seeing more customers using basic track-and-trace solutions—just to know where their vehicles are on the map. But as technology advances, many businesses want to go further: ‘That’s my vehicle, but what more can I do to reduce costs and improve ROI?’ That’s where telematics comes in.”
For Martin, it all boils down to education to secure that buy-in, especially in cases where there’s resistance to new technology.
He recalled one incident involving a reluctant driver who began falling asleep at the wheel. The telematics system detected it in time, issued an alert, and helped the driver avoid a near-miss, allowing him to return home safely to his family.
