Building safer bus operations with customisable telematics

Prioritising driver and passenger safety is a moral obligation for bus operators, as well as being vital for preserving reputation and reducing insurance and accident-related costs. In this blog article, we look at how safety teams can harness customisable telematics insights to identify the causes and patterns behind incidents so they can take proactive steps to reduce fleet risk.

Creating more intelligent fleet safety programmes

The most effective fleet safety software is highly customisable, so that insights and actions can be tailored to a fleet’s specific needs today and tomorrow. Customisable dashboards and reports highlight the trends that are causing the greatest risk, while adjustable rules help managers focus on behaviours that will deliver the greatest safety improvements. This creates a feedback loop where data pinpoints risks, targeted actions address them, and measurable improvements reinforce a strong safety culture throughout the organisation.

The Geotab Safety Centre

Geotab’s Safety Centre, built into the MyGeotab web-based fleet management platform, gives safety teams a central, customisable hub to reduce risk. Managers can tailor rules, reports, and dashboards to their unique challenges, while AI-powered analytics help predict and prevent incidents. By combining all safety insights in one place, the platform supports targeted coaching, consistent improvements, and measurable reductions in collisions. Geotab’s market-leading vehicle data extraction creates more dependable safety insights for drivers and managers alike.

Managers can also use the Safety Centre to benchmark their fleet safety performance against other bus fleets that operate similar duty cycles, reprocess data based on updated safety directives, and perform safety trend analysis to understand the underlying causes behind common incidents. Data analysis in the platform can be highly flexible for specific incident investigation. 

Drilling into driver behaviour

Driver behaviour is central to safety performance. Geotab’s Driver Safety Scorecard tracks safety KPIs such as excessive speeding, seatbelt usage and harsh braking, acceleration, and cornering to build a clear risk profile for every driver. This allows managers to quickly identify high-risk drivers for targeted training, while recognising safe drivers for their positive contributions. This continual feedback mechanism reduces collisions and encourages safer driving styles across the fleet.   

Customisable rules allow for continual improvement

Different fleets face different risks – one may struggle with speeding in urban areas, while another may have challenges with seatbelt compliance. Geotab’s customisable rules engine lets managers prioritise the behaviours that matter most to their fleet by modifying the weighting of the driver scorecard report.  

By setting evolving thresholds, safety teams can focus first on the most pressing risks, then gradually tighten standards as performance improves. For example, in the early stages of the safety programme, they may decide to create instant notifications whenever a driver exceeds a speed limit by more than 15mph (24kph), so that they can provide feedback to the driver. As the programme develops and driver performance improves, the threshold can be lowered to speed limit breaches of over 10mph (16kph). This progressive approach allows safety teams to set attainable thresholds without becoming inundated with alerts, and ensures that programmes remain achievable, effective, and continuously impactful.

As fleets transition to electric vehicles, safety managers need to be able to allow for the different driving characteristics of EVs compared to conventionally fueled vehicles. Geotab’s rules can be customised to cater for these differences. 

Dashboards that deliver instant impacts

MyGeotab streamlines workflows so that safety teams can spend their time making drivers safer, rather than wasting their time collating the data. They can view tailored dashboards and flexible reports that turn data into instantly actionable insights that enable them to proactively prevent future accidents. These actionable safety data insights inform risk-reduction strategies, and their impact on the fleet’s risk score can be actively monitored to predict how many fewer collisions will result. 

Making every journey safer

Customisable safety rules and insights are at the heart of a robust, data-driven fleet safety programme, enabling safety teams to target their most urgent safety challenges, measure improvements, and progressively raise standards over time. Geotab’s flexible Safety Centre equips bus operators with the insights and tools they need to take control of fleet risk. By transforming raw data into fleet-specific actionable strategies, safety teams can protect passengers, support drivers, and achieve measurable reductions in collisions.

Want to benefit from the power of fully customisable fleet safety software? Get a demo today.